"The falling sun glows upon crumpled mountains,
Making every ridge gold, every deep valley amethyst;
The bamboos fling plumed heads like spray at the foot of the cliffs;
Vainly their waves sweep round the crimson walls of the temple;
Up the slope winds the path;
Peasants, balancing great loads, sing as they climb.
Ah, their songs are all of heaviness and burdens."
Nancy looked with pondering eyes upon the wild upper meadows; illuminated they seemed, not only by the sun but by the words of the song which went so close to their heart. With redoubled intensity came the longing to sink her spirit in these tranquil scenes, to make them her home where she might dwell with the flowers she had worshiped. Tears swept like rain across her face; she bowed her head and wept. There was no cure for the unhappiness she felt. She had plucked the flowers and tossed them aside; so men would deal with her.
"Being scoffed at as a fool, I bury the flowers,
Yet know not who in other times will bury me;
In a morning the spring is finished, the crimson colors are old;
Flowers fall, men perish; both are known no more."
So she quoted the words of Tai-yü and dreamed that she too shared the fate of that pitiful heroine whom life had dowered with too burning a capacity for passion, too great and destroying joy in beauty.
This was not the way Herrick meant his daughter to begin her last free summer. The next morning, early, he sent for her, and in the room Nancy remembered so well, with the sun pouring blithely through the window, the rustle of trees, the noise of the brook at full traffic, sounds carried crisply on the air of a young vigorous day, amid these things which belonged more intimately to the room than its furniture, the father explained how careless of trouble he wished his daughter to be.
"This is our last summer together," he said, "and I have planned this summer for you. Perhaps I have been harsh at times, and not always fair; it is difficult to be fair when one is ill. I truly do not wish to lose you, Nancy, but—well, you know how things have happened. Nothing can happen but what the gods allow. We can't question fate. So let's enjoy ourselves as though no shadow hung over us. I want you to crowd a lifetime of happiness into these months, for it's no use disguising from you, my child, that you will have burdens in the future; happy though you may be, you will have burdens. I've scandalized your stepmother by bringing you here: she thinks you ought to be sitting at home sewing. But I don't want my daughter to spend her last months of childhood as a seamstress. This is your summer, Nancy, you are to be free as you wish. No one is to hinder you. I make no rules, impose no conditions. I only ask you to be happy, be the child that you ought to be at your time of life, and not give a moment's worry to what must come afterward."
He gave the silent girl a glance of affection which seemed to have taken twenty years from his age. The thinness which had come upon him of late enabled one to guess how fine his features once must have been.
"Come, Nancy," he said softly, "don't stay so solemn. Can't you give your father just one smile?"
In response to his begging Nancy's face lightened. Her eyes displayed such a look of perfect confidence that the father felt himself privileged never to forget what he had seen, for he had seen the mother herself given back to him for a brief moment from the region of shadows. The look spoke thoughts deeper than anything the girl knew or could frame in words: it spoke of a trust, an understanding, which would live between father and daughter, no matter what sorrows, no matter if death itself interposed. Separation would come, but never could they be truly separated. This was the loyalty Nancy offered. It was not entirely a smile; it had too much of the unearthly radiance of clouds which flame at dawn before a tempest; but it satisfied her father and filled his heart.