Chapter VI: Part II (3)

There were slips of geranium, too, and a small, prickly cactus. Anne thought of Alice’s masses of flowers, of those she herself had always managed to buy for the dining-room, and of lilacs and orchids, and tulips; Tulips that fell. But these little struggling things in pots and cans had personality, identity. They were a nuisance at first, because she was forever forgetting to water them; but when she discovered them drooping, and watched for them to revive, they assumed an importance beyond reason. They were gifts. She could not let them die. Then they bloomed.

By the time spring came again Miss Willy was hobbling about with a crutch and a cane. The crutch Anne had to buy. That month she began to do their washing. The cane was brought out of a chest in the attic.

“My poor grandfather’s cane,” said Miss Willy. “You can see his name on the silver band. Poor man. I’m afraid he drank a good deal. My grandmother married again. But after all, I’m sure there’s nothing like young love, my dear. I’ve been thinking. When Wanny grows up----”

So Willy was almost herself once more, though she was never again able to do active work. She could sit in the window behind the flowers and sew, and knit stockings for Warren. It lifted a good deal from Anne to have her watch the boy, whose capacity for mischief increased every day.

“What that child does think up,” said Willy. He had climbed on a chair when no one was looking and dropped soap into a stew Anne was making for dinner. They discovered it when he danced up and down, clapping his hands and shouting:

“Oh, ’ook at the bubbles! ’ook at the bubbles on the stove! Pretty bubbles! Wanny makes ooooh pretty bubbles!”

Then, from the chair where his mother had forcefully deposited him, he howled miserably. “Don’t like Wanny’s bubbles! Bad Mums don’t like Wanny’s bubbles!”

Anne looked dolefully at Willy. “Stew enough for two days. Oh dear! All that good meat!”

Miss Willy’s placidity was not ruffled. “He was only just doing what you do yourself, and what most folks do,” said she.

“I never put soap in the stew,” Anne protested, laughing ruefully.

“I ain’t so sure about that. But what I meant was he only sees things from where he stands. You got to make allowances for that.”

In the course of the months Anne had achieved some measure of orderliness. Work did not crowd as much as before. She found herself looking forward with unsuspected eagerness to the time when the garden could be planted. It was good to see the snows melting, good to see the brown earth emerging and drying, good to bring in pussy-willows and to wander with Warren through the moist woods to find hepaticas, even good to hear the hylas again. One night when the others were asleep she stood at her window and looked out. The moon was high. Earth and sky were inherent parts of the same beauty, hesitant, translucent. In the moonlight even the familiar garden and roads and fields wore an effect of luminous unreality. The world slept, yet it was breathing and dreaming. It called her to go forth into its hesitant loveliness, to penetrate and become a part of its dream. The boy was sleeping with his face buried in his pillow, the red curls on his neck damp and sweet. He could be trusted not to wake. She crept down the stairs. The doors were never locked.

It was strange to be walking along the road in this strange light. Even the shadows were softer, melting and merging into the earth. On and on she walked, slowly, through a world creating itself anew, through sweet woods, between fields fragrant with the moist breath of night, past a marsh where the hylas piped, little Pans, plaintive, luring, singing of joys that might be or joys to come.

Abruptly, where the road wound through a stretch of woods, she stopped. Something moved there. Once fear would have held her, but she had come to know how needless fear was in that far-away countryside.

“I hope I have not frightened you?” a voice asked.

Strange, to hear again a voice of cultivation, words enunciated with careless precision. Suddenly she remembered. Not far beyond was the house of the man who had come out to the doctor’s car on the day it had stalled, the man the doctor termed “old fool.”

“Not exactly,” she said, quietly. “I’m afraid I have walked rather farther than I meant to.”

He had come nearer. He was hatless, and she remembered how white his hair had looked that day, and realized that its whiteness gave him that strange appearance now in the dim light.

“Yes. One has to come out on a night like this,” he said. “I’ve an idea that the real purpose of the moon is to keep the balance even. The sun works. The moon calms and blesses. We need both work and calm, to keep the balance true.”

Anne smiled faintly. How odd he was, to speak like that, without preface, to a stranger.

“There are various other things one needs, are there not?” she suggested, falling into his mood.

“Yes. Oh, yes. But they all come into the two categories. Work, not necessarily what one does not love or enjoy, but work, occupation. And calm. ‘Ease and alternate labor.’ What else is there?”

They had fallen into step. After a moment she said, “I think you are laughing at me.”

He grasped at a bough that projected across the road, its buds just beginning to open, snapped it off, the sound of its breaking distinct in the night’s stillness.

“Forgive me. Not at you. I should not have said that. Nor felt it. It’s only fair that life should give us the obvious things, make us go searching for the others.”

“So there is something else?”

She knew he turned to look at her. “You came out to find it, didn’t you? And I came out.”

They walked on a little. “Does one find, I wonder?” she murmured.

They had reached the edge of the woods. Before them a meadow lay flooded with moonlight, gleaming like a sea becalmed. They stood still, held by its beauty.

“I don’t know,” he said presently. “But if one may still search, still come out, into this!”

“It’s beautiful,” she said softly. “But there’s no answer there.”

“I’m not so sure. Not that it matters, the answer. It’s the search, the fact that one can come out, that one wants to.”

“Is that enough?” Unconsciously they spoke almost in whispers, as though to speak aloud would be to break the spell of the night.

“Not enough, no. But there’s always the belief or the hope that there’s something to be found. Else one would not come out.”

“I wonder,” she said.

“Oh, we all wonder. But we all know it’s there.”

“What?”

He waited. “Rhythm, I think. Or call it God.”

They were silent a moment. Then, without seeming to know she was there, he walked away.

6

The first day she permitted Miss Willy to go as far as the garden Anne proudly pointed. “There!” she exclaimed. “Look at that, all ready for the seeds. I did it myself, too. Dorilliam did nothing but the plowing.”

“Wanny helped,” the youngster boasted.

“Not the hoeing and raking! You never did, Anne Warren!” old Willy cried.

Anne laughed, brushed a hand upward across her damp forehead. “But I did. I’m so proud of it. I call that a good job well done.”

A letter received from Alice about that time amused her. Alice and George were taking the children to Europe for the summer. Would not Anne use their house while they were gone? The servants would be there, the house going on as usual. There would be the car, and Warren would like the children’s playthings, the sand-pile and swing in the yard. There was plenty of room for Miss Willy, too. Anne’s first thought was, “Why, I couldn’t leave the garden!” Then she laughed aloud. But it was quite true. That garden had been conquered the year before. Now it was hers, and she could not tolerate the thought of leaving it. That summer there were no such mistakes as had baffled her last year, for old Willy looked on and advised. Anne was bending over the wash-tubs every week, rejoicing in the flapping white things on the line. She was making their bread, and under Willy’s direction canning fruits and young tender vegetables in glass jars for winter. Warren, with his increased capacity for getting out of sight and into mischief, was even more care than before. Yet she had an elated consciousness of living.

One July day when the heat was so intense that Willy had not ventured out of doors, Anne was hanging out clothes, grateful that the weekly washing was done. The old woman came to the kitchen door.

“Wanny with you?” she called.

Anne put the last clothes-pin in place, took up her basket. “That monkey! Has he slipped off again? I’ll have to go look for him.”

She went, calling, and presently Warren came running towards her, his face mottled with crimson, torn with briers, and both his closed fists dripping red. But he was smiling angelically.

“I brought you some, too, Mums,” said he, opening his hands and holding them up to her. He had been tightly grasping the raspberries.

“He ought to be spanked,” said Miss Willy.

Anne looked over the child’s head, and smiled. He was standing in one of the tubs getting scoured, his dimpled body rising from the suds in which he was infinitely more interested than in cleanliness.

“Will you do the spanking?” she asked.

Miss Willy looked at her over her spectacles, said not a word more.

That afternoon the child was sleepy. His forehead was hot. “Don’t want to go out in the garden. Want to stay here,” he said later, and Anne, who was starting the fire for supper, absently agreed.

“All right, old man. But don’t get in mother’s way.”

Then she heard a cry from Miss Willy. Another moment and she was kneeling on the floor, lifting the child to her breast, shrieking.

“Stop that! Leave him there! Don’t take him up! It’s a spasm,” she heard Willy say.

“He’s dying! My baby’s dying!”

“He ain’t, either! You leave him right there, and run for the doctor. I’ll get the kettle on. Give me a spoon to put in his mouth. Now run----!”

The little body was stiff, the child’s eyes rolled upward.

“If the doctor ain’t there, get Mis’ Beaman,” Willy called after her.

She stumbled on the steps, caught herself, raced on. The doctor was not there. Mrs. Beaman turned from the stove, the twins and the other children staring open-mouthed at the frantic woman who had burst in upon them.

“My baby! Convulsions--he’s dying,” Anne panted.

Instantly Mrs. Beaman grasped a steaming tea-kettle from the stove and held it towards Anne. “Take that and run,” said she. “Here you, Johnny, you carry this pot. Never mind the potatoes in it, they won’t do any harm. Now I’ll get the mustard----”

Ten minutes, half an hour, and Wanny was wrapped in a blanket, relaxed, his eyes closed. Mrs. Beaman laughed.

“I used to think you used a good many things to bathe him with, when he was a baby,” she said, “but I guess it’s the first time he ever had a hot bath with potatoes floating around in the water.”

Anne was still trembling. “If you hadn’t come! You saved my boy.”

Late in August Nicky came for a week. She watched Anne at first curiously, making no comment on her varied activities. Human work in the garden was over until time for harvesting. There were hours in the long afternoons when the two could sit in the shade or walk through the woods.

“Anne,” Veronica asked one day, “do you ever have time to think?”

Anne laughed. “Yes, with my hands.”

“I’ve never seen you look so happy, so satisfied.”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“That, from Nance Denison! But you aren’t Nance Denison.”

Anne leaned forward, her hands dropped beyond her knees. “Oh, yes I am. Don’t you think I am not, Nicky old girl. I always wanted to do things, my own things, have my own way. Now I’m doing them, reveling in having my own way. Of course I’m happy!”

“And satisfied?”

“Oh, well, that! There always has to be something beyond. Of course I’m not going to stay here forever.”

“That’s really what I came about, Nance.” Anne looked at her questioningly. “There’s a new home for working girls. A sort of hotel, really, but they want to provide something more for the girls than other homes do. They want a hostess, a woman who has been used to things. I can get you the job if you want it.”

“There’s Wanny.”

“You could have Wanny with you. The pay isn’t bad.”

Anne stood up, her hands behind her back. There was the garden, the house, the hen-house, the hills and ripening fields.

“Nicky, I can’t,” she said. “Not while old Willy lives.”

Nicky lay back, stretched her arms over her head, yawned. “You’re growing up, Anne,” said she.

Afterwards, Anne wondered at herself a little. It was true that a few years before she would have taken the chance without thinking of anyone who stood in the way. If she had heard of some other woman making such a choice she would have scorned her for it, set her down in the same category into which she had dismissed people like those who were now her neighbors, as being of no account, bound by their own dullness and stupidity and lack of initiative, without intention, without aspiration. Her mind was still groping. She could not have told why she had permitted herself to be held by allegiance to old Willy. But, however vaguely, she was beginning to feel that there was something beyond initiative and aspiration, some established necessary sequence, perhaps even some purpose.

Several times she had encountered the man Kent on the road or in the store. Once he had said to Warren:

“You come to see me, and I’ll show you something!”

She thought of him as of one who could speak her old language, remembered his odd way of coming abruptly to things that were commonly left unspoken or only touched upon after a preface of intimacy, as though they were common enough to be taken for granted, so much a part of one’s habitual thought as to come naturally to any man’s lips. Her harvesting work was done for the year. The little place was neat for winter, the pantry shelves were filled. She smiled when she looked at those rows of bright jars. She, Anne Denison, “forehanded!” On a day in late September she took her son by the hand and set forth. Not that Warren permitted himself to be held in leash for long. His legs were sturdy. How she loved them, their curves and dimples and bruises. He would trot ahead of her to kick up the leaves, go foraging into the woods, spring out upon her at the next turn. He howled when he investigated a chestnut burr, a moment later joyously presented her with a spray of asters. Walks with Wanny had their variety. Before they came in sight of the cottage her ears caught the sound of music. A piano, played rather superbly, she thought. In spite of her restraining call Warren flew to the door, hammered upon it.

“I want to see what that noise is. Let me in. I want to see.”

As she reached the door it opened, and Kent stood there, laughing. He took the child’s hand, closed the door behind them, and came down the walk towards Anne.

“We’ve interrupted you,” she said, with an air of apology.

But he shook his head. “No. I was playing to my wife. But she’s asleep now. It always quiets her.”

“I am sorry. I did not know Mrs. Kent was ill.”

His face bore a worn look, as of one who had not slept. “Always ill. I am very glad you came to see me.”

“I have been thinking so much, Mr. Kent, of some of the things you said to me that night when I was so wild as to walk in the moonlight.” He looked at her questioningly, yet she did not find it difficult to speak simply of what had seemed so simple to him.

He nodded. “Ah--yes.” Then his manner changed. He looked down at Warren. “How would you like to come into my garden? I could show you something there.”

“There isn’t any garden any more. We’ve dug the potatoes,” said Warren.

“There is always a garden,” the man said, laughing. “Come along!”

He led the way with the boy, talking and answering, for there had to be a good deal of answering, with Warren.

“This is a funny garden,” said Warren.

“You just wait,” laughed Kent. “And don’t stumble.”

The path led down sharply. Anne drew a quick breath when it ended abruptly in a cleared space at the base of the hill, a space perhaps a full hundred yards across, leveled and smooth, the woods closing it in, sunlight drenching it. Only a few bronzed leaves clung to the low-growing oaks against its forested wall. For the rest, it was raked clean, like a house swept and garnished. And that, thought Anne, was what it must be, a house here in the woods, with the sky for its roof. There were borders where even now a late rose or two braved the cold nights. At one side a long shallow pool, its banks strengthened with field stones, caught a bit of the sky’s blue. Just beyond was an arbor, white, grape-trellised, and at other places two long low benches of gleaming white. On one of these lay a doll, large as a baby and as daintily dressed, its legs hanging limply over the side. On the floor of the arbor, in a spot of sunlight, a dog lay. It got up when it saw Kent, hobbled joyously towards him on three legs. He stooped and patted it. Warren drew back towards his mother.

“I never saw a dog like that,” he said. “Where’s all of him?”

“The rest of him, you mean?” Kent laughed aloud. “Well, once he was caught in a trap. The trap bit off his paw. But there are no other dogs here, you see, so he doesn’t realize how different he is. We don’t remind him of it.”

Anne remembered, something the doctor had said that first time. “A lot of lame ducks.” This, apparently, was one of them. Then she became aware of a face in the depths of the arbor, a form there.

“Jenny,” Kent called. “You Jenny there! Come out here and say ‘how do’ to the lady and the young man I’ve brought to call on you.”

It was a child; or, surely, the laugh came from a girl who was not quite past childhood. A girl of thirteen or so, Anne thought, when she haltingly emerged. As she came she seemed to help herself by the side of the arbor where shade lay deepest. Her face wore that curious agedness of the city child who has long been ill.

“A-a-ah! No you don’t,” Kent called out, laughing. “Don’t you touch that crutch, Jenny!”

“I ain’t, honest I ain’t, Mr. Kent. It’s on the bench!”

“Then you’re cheating. You’re holding on to the wall.”

The girl giggled delightedly, as at some huge joke. “But I got to.”

“Now hear that! I told you to come here. Now then, come along. Come along.”

She came to the opening of the arbor, bracing herself by a hand on its side. Anne saw that her body was twisted, restricted by some muscular impediment, perhaps a form of paralysis. Jenny was smiling, and Kent shook his head.

“Won’t do, Jenny. You let go of that door, and come out here.”

“But I can’t, Mr. Kent. Honest I can’t.”

“Come!”

She took a step or two forward, wavered. Anne would have jumped to her side, but Kent’s raised hand warned her back.

“Now you see that you can. Come along!”

A step or two more, and suddenly the girl fell awkwardly, sprawling, laughing. “Gee, ain’t he funny!” she cried.

Kent helped her up, took her arm and led her to one of the benches. “Now next time, young woman, you’ll walk. Tumbling has gone out of fashion. Do you hear?” he warned her.

“It’s a heavenly place,” Anne said, “a sort of magic garden, as though the fairies had lived here a while and then forgotten it.”

Kent nodded. “I made it for my wife. We just about live down here, in the summer. You see, she’s afraid of the woods, and as they shut in the garden she’s safe here. She’s afraid to run away, except by the path, and we can watch that.”

In spite of herself Anne stared.

“Yes, she is like that,” Kent said, quietly. “As I said, it’s the reason for our living here. Where we lived before she was forever running away, slipping past all our vigilance. It wasn’t good for her to be constantly watched and she needed the air. Now she is happier. She has some freedom, but she is safe.”

Before the strange revelation Anne knew nothing to say. Kent went on, as though musing: “That doll over there. It is hers. I shall have to take it back to the house before she wakes up, or she’ll cry for it. She calls it her baby, yet at times, you see, she forgets it. When she is very bad. Yes, she is like that.”

Presently Anne said, “The little girl there----”

Kent smiled. “Oh, Jenny. Yes. We have them here. First one, then another. Jenny will soon be all right. She went on two crutches a few months ago.”

He had indeed shown her something in his garden. Anne was certain of that. His wife “like that,” the lame dog, the child Jenny. She thought of their meeting in the moonlight, and his words, “Not that it matters, the answer. It’s the search.” Now, in the light of what he had shown her, those words did not ring true. For what was his search, how much was he seeking? Obviously, the man was not impoverished. He was not held to Heathville by that dumb and stupid allegiance to the soil that she read in the simpler people. Yet there he stayed with a mad wife and a lame dog and children like Jenny. “We have them here. First one, then another.” He was not searching, not seeking. He was submitting, letting himself be held. By what?

She had been held by old Willy, as Kent was held by his wife.

Throughout the winter the old woman seemed as mentally brisk as ever. “My land,” she said, one cold Sunday morning, “I do wish I could get up the hill to church. Makes me feel downright wicked, to be so mad about it. Not that I s’ppose it’s any worse to get mad because you can’t go to church than because you can’t dance or something, nor any better, either.”

Anne laughed. “I don’t believe it will be held up against you because you can’t go to church,” said she.

Miss Willy sniffed. “I was talking about getting mad, not about going to church,” she said.

Anne laughed. “Well, I’m sorry you can’t get to church, then.”

“So am I. I do want something awful to see that new bonnet the minister’s wife got in the missionary box.”

“Willy! You wicked old woman! You’ve fooled me for years. I thought you went to church to say your prayers. I didn’t dream your mind was so set on worldly things.”

Miss Willy sniffed. “I do go to church to say my prayers, when I can get there. And if a body’s mind wasn’t mixed up with worldly things, what would there be to pray about?” she demanded.

There came a day in April when the sun shone and from Anne’s window all the world wore a fresh morning face after rain. Dressing, she looked out upon the familiar scene, now as unconsciously cherished as the features of a beloved. Then she turned to the bed where Warren, now in his fourth year, lay asleep. He had long since refused to submit to a day-time nap, though after his day’s intensive play he was willing enough to go to bed with the chickens. But no birds could wake him early in the morning. He lay now with his arms and legs outstretched, strong and plump, his firm flesh tanned by sun and weather. He was her life, her blessing. Whenever she saw him like that a surge of love all but choked her. She bent over him before she left the room. He would sleep for hours longer.

She went down quietly, started the kitchen fire as noiselessly as she could, went out to the hens. The morning air was sweet. Good to breathe it in. She raised her face in the sunshine. When she went in again she set the simple breakfast to cooking. There was no sound from Miss Willy’s room. Strange, for the old woman had not lost her life-long habit of waking with the dawn. She would wait patiently until Anne could find time to help her dress, but always she called out a morning greeting. Anne softly turned the knob of the bedroom door. The little figure was lying on its side, one hand under a withered cheek. Anne’s heart leaped. That stillness, and the posture like a child asleep, secure in a mothering presence near by. She bent over the bed.

Miss Willy was, indeed, asleep. Past waking.

Presently Anne went across the road for the doctor. He made his brief examination, and stood up, looking at Anne who was unaware of the tears on her cheeks.

“Yes,” he told her, gently, “yes, she’s gone. Worn out. That’s the best way to go. Finished her work.”

“Sleep at the end of the day,” Anne murmured.

The doctor nodded. “Like David. You remember? ‘Who after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid with his fathers.’ What’s better than to serve one’s own generation?”

“She did that.”

The doctor turned away. “I’ll send women to you,” he said, from the door.

They came, those women. Quietly, reverently they came, not reluctantly to that task from which Anne shrank, but taking it as one of the things to be done, by its very inevitableness removed from horror. She heard them moving about the room, speaking in low voices behind the closed door. They asked her to heat water, and when she had it ready one of them said:

“Now don’t you feel so bad. Her time had come.”

Dorilliam’s mother came out to the kitchen. “I didn’t like to open the bureau without you said so. But I know where the things are. She’s had ’em laid away a long time. She told me about ’em.”

Anne helped them find the poor, decent clothes, so plain, so clean. So Willy had thought of her burial, even while she thought so much of living. Death--Anne remembered the day her father died. Willy had been alone with him. She and Brice had hurried, but arrived too late. She had been a little in awe of that silent presence, even afraid. She had cried out to Brice when strange men with black bags passed the parlor door on the way upstairs, and Brice had closed the door and put his arms about her, closed the door against her dread. Now there was no Brice.

Hurriedly she put that memory from her. There was nothing of fear connected with Willy’s lying there. Why remember that shielding from that other fear? She had felt no grief for her father; they had never been close together. After he died she had been sorry that they had never been closer. This was different. Not grief, but something gentler, something more poignant. Or was grief like this? Death like this quiet passing seemed scarcely mysterious, but only a part of the inevitable round of things. Now she knew something about that round of things. There was winter, a going to sleep, and spring following winter. She thought of Miss Willy’s springtime, of the little toiling creature who had wanted her freedom. Had she found freedom now? Or what? For there was spring.

“You’d better let me take Wanny home with me,” said Mrs. Beaman. “The twins’ll just love looking after him. It ain’t good for children to be in the house when there’s death.”

Anne kissed her. “If you’ll take him for a few hours, later,” she said. “For a day or two I can tell him Miss Willy’s asleep in there.”

So the child played about as usual, whispering when he came into the kitchen, tiptoeing past the closed door. Willy was asleep. He understood that, and Anne dwelt on the thought of it.

Mrs. Bassett came over the first day, a slender, thin-lipped woman, with some sprays of geranium in her hand. “Seems like I never get much time to grow flowers,” she said, “but there’s these.”

Another brought heliotrope, another a basket of crocuses. One came with nasturtiums. “Seems real nice to see ’em this time o’ year, don’t it?” she asked, with pride. “They do real well in my south windows. They come from some seeds she gave me once.”

At night another came, a great white bloom in her hand and on her face the look of a votary. “My night-bloomin’ cereus. ’Twon’t last, but she always come over to see it, the night ’twas due to come out. I want she should have it.”

On the day when Anne sent Warren to play with the Beaman children the neighbors gathered solemnly in the parlor, presently to follow Miss Willy, who never had led before. Anne stood by the grave lined with evergreen boughs. There was greenery, too, over the mound of fresh earth.

“Who did that?” she asked, as they came away.

“Why, we all did. We always do that, for a neighbor.”

Those women, unimaginative, she had thought them, their lives but one long labor, too barren for sentiment; yet when the time for sentiment came they had done that tender service.

On the day after the funeral Warren went into the bedroom, stood looking at the bed. “Where’s auntie?” he asked. “When did she wake up?”

“She’s gone away, Wanny. Where she won’t have to go to sleep any more.”

The child stared at her. “Where’s that?”

“Ever so far away. Where the spring lives before it comes. Where the baby birds come from, and baby boys and girls, before they are born.” She had no sooner spoken the words than she was conscious of the fatuity of them. Why should she cheat the child with sentimentality? Why not try to tell him the truth? Why deck it out in inanities? But Warren’s eyes were alight and wide-opened.

“Where the fairies live?” he asked.

“Perhaps,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, well,” said Wanny, “she won’t like it much there. Not without me. I guess she’ll come back soon.”

But a day or two afterwards he came to his mother with quivering lip. “I want auntie. Why don’t she come back? Will you tell her to hurry?”

Anne turned her face away. “I want her, too, my lamb. But she can’t come.”

“Why can’t she come? Has she lost her crutch?”

“Yes. She’s lost it.”

“Why don’t you take it to her, then?”

“I can’t, Wanny. I can’t go where she is.”

“Well, where is she? That’s what I want to know.”

How much theology did one give a child? There had to be something. What could one say? She took him in her arms. “Auntie is with her Heavenly Father, my dear. He loves her, and needs her.”

“How do you know he does?”

Theology had its difficulties. “I do know. He’s my Heavenly Father, too. So I know. Just the way you know mother loves you.”

Wanny thought about that. “Have I got one, too?” he asked.

She kissed his curls. “Of course. We all have. Now run along and play. Maybe you’d like to help feed the chickens?”

But a few nights thereafter, while she was making him ready for bed, taking off his stockings and reveling in the fragrance of his hair against her face, he propounded another question.

“Mums,” he asked, “when am I going to my father?”

7

Under old Willy’s handkerchiefs in the top drawer of a bureau they found a folded sheet of paper. “I am in my right mind and senses. I give my body to the grave and my soul to the Lord. Everything else is to go to my friend, Anne Warren Denison.” There was Willy’s cramped signature, and the signature of witnesses.

“It was no more than right,” said Mrs. Wells, who was one of the witnesses, “seeing you come here to take care of her in her old age.”

Anne said nothing. The date stood out like a pointing finger. Willy had written it more than five years before she had come to Heathville, at a time when she thought of the old woman once a year, when the purchase of some gift for Christmas was one of those burdensome trivialities that she got through with as hurriedly as she could. The house was hers, the garden, the few hundreds in the savings bank, because old Willy had loved her, in her own mind built up about her a little tradition that later expressed itself in the kindly falsehood with which she quieted the curiosity of the neighbors. “Come to take care of her in her old age.” Perhaps Willy had dreamed of that during the years she had lived alone. Perhaps she had longed to have someone in her old age. It was a new thing to Anne to have that feeling of dull self-reproach, that consciousness of failure, unmixed with anger. Anger had obliterated any consciousness of failure towards Brice. Now old Willy’s bequest and the inescapable thoughts it brought with it held a mirror of self-analysis up to her. She could not look around it, nor walk away from it, but must stare and stare at the reflection of herself. And there was another thing that she had to think about. Warren’s questions, his reference to his father.

Willy was dead, Brice had gone out of her life, but the boy remained. Not four years in the world, already he was asking questions she could not answer. He would grow, would question further. Was she going to fail her son as she had failed those others? Oh yes, Willy had, indeed, had someone to take care of her in her old age; her longings and her poor little pride had been justified at the end. But Anne could take to herself no credit for that. Willy dead, she could admit her own failure. If things had fallen out differently, she would have said, when word came of the old woman’s death, “The poor old soul!” When word came of the bequest, she would have said, “How funny! What on earth shall I do with it?” It was only by chance, and because of her own need, not Willy’s, that she had stood by at the end.

So, now that the time had come when she was free to leave, she had to pause for a while, try to read her compass, to take her bearings, for there were strange seas ahead. She had been drifting. Where was she now? What was her position, what worth had this place she had thought she had won to, this security she thought her own toil had achieved for her spirit, this freedom from the bond of obligation? There was Brice. She had never believed that Brice was dead. Gradually she found herself thinking more and more about Brice, without anger, without bitterness.

If all life lead on to something, what was waiting for her? What was she going to meet? Above all, what was Warren going to meet, and how was she going to help him meet it? Could she escape that slow, onsweeping purpose pervading everything, that warp that ran through the whole fabric of life? To some natures life is a decomposing thing, to some a stimulus, to others a slow melting-pot, terrible in its persistency, yet all the while in its crucible melting away the baser elements that the purer may emerge. In some natures a gold of the spirit is the residuum, made a thing of itself only after the fires of life have had their way with it, worked it and fused and refined it. Anne’s physical freedom had come at last only to thrust her into the core of the crucible, but even yet she was not undergoing its intensest heat.

It was too early to begin work in the garden. The fields were drying slowly that year, the season pausing, farmers waiting with impatient acceptance of the inevitable. Many hours during the winter she had passed with Kent before his fireside or in Miss Willy’s parlor or tramping over the rutted roads. He had played to her and loaned her books. On a day when the sun was as warm as in June she and Warren started for Kent’s house, the boy running here and there to peep into the buckets hanging to roadside maple trees.

“Sap’s running good,” Deacon Bassett told her as they passed his place. “Cold nights and hot suns--that’s what brings the sap up.”

She had never encountered Mrs. Kent. Her presence pervaded the house, Kent spoke of her frequently, but Anne had dreaded to see her, hoped that she never would--that woman who played with a doll, who was afraid of the woods and had to be watched lest she run away. In her mind she had visualized something repulsive. Insanity, she supposed, was a thing of wild impulses, a thing of terror. Pitiful, yes, but dreadful, better kept behind bars or in one of those places where “they” had good care. But on that day she was sitting in a deep chair before a fire of embers, and Kent was playing. The children, Warren and Jenny, were in a window-seat busy about their own affairs. The door opened. Anne could see, without moving, the slim form that stood there, hesitant. There was nothing startling, nothing repulsive, about that woman. Forty, perhaps, she was obviously fragile, and could never have been beautiful; but there remained about her a delicacy, a grace, a gentle desire to please that must once have meant charm. She was smiling.

Kent looked over his shoulder, his fingers still touching the keys. “Come in, Paula,” he said, quietly.

Mrs. Kent came in, step by step, still looking at Anne, until she was standing in front of her, hands loosely clasped. She waited until the music had stopped.

“Pretty lady,” she said, under her breath.

Kent came towards them. “It’s Mrs. Denison, Paula. Aren’t you glad to see her?”

She held out her hand, and Anne, standing, took it. Paula still looked at her searchingly. “I don’t know her. But she’s pretty. I’m glad she came to see us. Are we going to have tea, Rufus? Are there any cakes?”

Kent went out of the room, and his wife took Anne’s hand, led her to a sofa, sat down by her. She was still smiling, still friendly, like a child in her gentleness. Anne could find nothing to say. Before Kent returned Wanny slipped from the window-seat, came and stood in front of the pair, his small legs apart, hands clasped behind his back, a posture copied from his firm friend Dorilliam.

Paula’s lips parted. She withdrew her hand from Anne’s. “Oh! It’s a child!”

“My son Warren,” said Anne. Her maternal instinct at work, she added, “Wanny, say ‘How do you do, Mrs. Kent.’”

But Mrs. Kent had slipped to her knees before the boy. She was touching him, first his bright hair, then his cheek, then his hand. To his mother’s amazement the youngster submitted. Then, quite suddenly, he laughed.

“I like you,” said he. “You’re so funny.”

Paula sat back on the floor, laughed too. “And I like you, boy.” She looked up at Anne, leaned closer, whispered. “I have a baby, too. She doesn’t grow. It worries me. And she never talks. She’s asleep now, or I couldn’t have come down. I’ll show her to you, some day. But her hair--I like the color of your boy’s hair--like fire-light. What is your name, boy?”

Wanny told her. Again she fingered the ruddy softness of his hair, and he laughed aloud. She said, “I like it. I think I will change the color of my baby’s hair to that. Rufus will do it for me.”

“Will do what, Paula?” Kent asked. He came into the room, the Japanese boy following with a tea-tray whose richness reminded Anne of old days. When she had told him, he said, quite naturally, as though it were the most usual thing in the world to change hair:

“Yes, of course, I will. I will send to the city today for some hair the color of Wanny’s. In four days from now your baby shall have red hair like his, Paula.”

And Paula, jumping up, clapped her hands. But then she spied the cakes on the tea-tray, grabbed two of them, ate.

“Rufus,” Anne asked, a week or so later when they were walking along through the muddy road, “Rufus, why do you keep her there? Why do you have her live with you?” For one could ask any question, directly, of Kent.

He frowned, looked puzzled. “I don’t know that I can make it plain to you, Anne, or to myself. But there’s this: one does not discard responsibility, or care, or what not, by putting it out of sight. One sees a thing through, anyway. Life jolly well sees to it that we do that.”

Afterwards, thinking it over, Anne wondered. Was that true? Did one never escape? Was escape cut off? A thing out of sight--did that follow one, haunt, overtake? Or was it always inevitably present? There was her marriage. Brice. She had believed they had escaped each other, and misunderstandings, and the enormous, minute daily rubs. Yet here was she, here was Warren, with his developing intelligence and his questions and demands and rights, and there, somewhere, was Brice. Did he, too, have his demands, his rights? Were they still her concern, again to become her problem? Was the whole thing still there, for them both? Was there still that bond, still, still to be reckoned with whether she would or not? “One sees it through, anyway. Life sees to it that we do that.” Life--what was it? The wheel of the squirrel-cage old Willy had once spoken about, the wheel that one spins and spins, believing one’s self the force that drives the world; the cage that one cannot leave, but must return to and return to, because all outside the cage is wilderness?

For days she weighed that question; then came the great crisis of her life, out of the blue, suddenly, without warning, as crises come. It came, that flame of Fate which was to burn away slowly, with agony, the dross of her spirit.