X
New-Year's night again, and bitter cold.
When I forced myself away from my fire before dark, and ran down to the stable to see about feeding and bedding the horses and cows, every beast had its head drawn in towards its shoulders, and looked at me with the dismal air of saying, "Who is tempering the wind now?" The dogs in the kennel, with their noses between their hind-legs, were shivering under their blankets and straw like a nest of chilled young birds. The fowls on the roost were mere white and blue puffs of feathers. Nature alone has the making of her creatures; why doesn't she make them comfortable?
After supper old Jack and Dilsy came in, and standing against the wall with their arms folded, told me more of what happened after I got sick. That was about the middle of September, and it is only two weeks since I became well enough to go in and out through all sorts of weather.
It was the middle of September then, my servants said, and as within a week after taking the fever I was very ill, a great many people came out to inquire for me. Some of these, walking around the garden, declared it was a pity for such fruit and flowers to be wasted, and so helped themselves freely every time. The old doctor, who always fears for my health at this season, stopped by nearly every day to repeat how he had warned me, and always walked back to his gig in a round-about way, which required him to pass a favorite tree; and once he was so indignant to find several other persons gathered there, and mournfully enjoying the last of the fruit as they predicted I would never get well, that he came back to the house—with two pears in each duster pocket and one in his mouth—and told Jack it was an outrage. The preacher, likewise, who appears in the spring-time, one afternoon knocked reproachfully at the front door and inquired whether I was in a condition to be reasoned with. In his hand he carried a nice little work-basket, which may have been brought along to catch his prayers; but he took it home piled with grapes.
And then they told me, also, how many a good and kind soul came with hushed footsteps and low inquires, turning away sometimes with brightened faces, sometimes with rising tears—often people to whom I had done no kindness or did not even know; how others, whom I had quarrelled with or did not like, forgot the poor puny quarrels and the dislike, and begged to do for me whatever they could; how friends went softly around the garden, caring for a flower, putting a prop under a too heavily-laden limb, or climbing on step-ladders to tie sacks around the finest bunches of grapes, with the hope that I might be well in time to eat them—touching nothing themselves, having no heart to eat; how dear, dear ones would never leave me day or night; how a good doctor wore himself out with watching, and a good pastor sent up for me his spotless prayers; and at last, when I began to mend, how from far and near there poured in flowers and jellies and wines, until, had I been the multitude by the Sea of Galilee, there must have been baskets to spare. God bless them! God bless them all! And God forgive us all the blindness, the weakness, and the cruelty with which we judge each other when we are in health.
This and more my beloved old negroes told me a few hours ago, as I sat in deep comfort and bright health again before my blazing hickories; and one moment we were in laughter and the next in tears—as is the strange life we live. This is a gay household now, and Dilsy cannot face me without a fleshly earthquake of laughter that I have become such a high-tempered tiger about punctual meals.
In particular, my two nearest neighbors were much at odds as to which had better claim to nurse me; so that one day Mrs. Walters, able to endure it no longer, thrust Mrs. Cobb out of the house by the shoulder-blades, locked the door on her, and them opened the shutters and scolded her out of the window.
One thing I miss. My servants have never called the name of Georgiana. The omission is unnatural, and must be intentional. Of course I have not asked whether she showed any care; but that little spot of silence affects me as the sight of a tree remaining leafless in the woods where everything else is turning green.
XI
To-day I was standing at a window, looking out at the aged row of cedars, now laden with snow, and thinking of Horace and Soracte. Suddenly, beneath a jutting pinnacle of white boughs which left under themselves one little spot of green, I saw a cardinal hop out and sit full-breasted towards me. The idea flashed through my mind that this might be that shyest, most beautiful fellow whom I had found in September, and whom I tried to make out as the son of my last winter's pensioner. At least he has never lived in my yard before; for when, to test his shyness, I started to raise the window-sash, at the first noise of it he was gone. My birds are not so afraid of me. I must get on better terms with this stranger.
Mrs. Walters over for a while afterwards. I told her of my fancy that this bird was one of last summer's brood, and that he appeared a trifle larger than any male I had ever seen. She said of course. Had I not fed the parents all last winter? When she fed her hens, did they not lay bigger eggs? Did not bigger eggs contain bigger chicks? Did not bigger chicks become bigger hens, again? According to Mrs. Walters, a single winter's feeding of hot corn-meal, scraps of bacon, and pods of red pepper will all but bring about a variation of species; and so if the assumed rate at which I am now going were kept up a hundred years, my cedar-trees might be full of a race of red-birds as large and as fat as geese.
Standing towards sundown at another window, I saw Georgiana sewing at hers, as I have seen her every day since I got out of bed. Why should she sew so much? There is a servant also; and they sew, sew, sew, as if eternal sewing were eternal happiness, eternal salvation. The first day she sprang up, letting her work roll off her lap, and waved her handkerchief inside the panes, and smiled with what looked to me like radiant pleasure that I was well again. I was weak and began to tremble, and, going back to the fireside, lay back in my chair with a beating of the heart that was a warning. Since then she has recognized me by only a quiet kindly smile. Why has no one ever called her name? I believe Mrs. Walters knows. She comes nowadays as if to tell something, and goes away with a struggle that she has not told it. But a secret can no more stay in the depths of Mrs. Walter's mind than cork at the bottom of water; some day I shall see this mystery riding on the surface.
XII
Yes, she knew; while unconscious I talked of Georgiana, of being in love with her. Mrs. Walters added, sadly, that Georgiana came home in the fall engaged to that New York cousin. Hence the sewing—he is to marry her in June.
I am not in love with her. It is now four weeks since hearing this conventional fiction, and every day I have been perfectly able to repeat: "I am not in love with Georgiana!" There was one question which I put severely to Mrs. Walters: Had she told Georgiana of my foolish talk? She shook her head violently, and pressed her lips closely together, suggesting how impossible it would be for the smallest monosyllable in the language to escape by that channel; but she kept her eyes wide open, and the truth issued from them, as smoke in a hollow tree, if stopped in at a lower hole, simply rises and comes out at a higher one. "You should have shut your eyes also," I said. "You have told her every word of it, and the Lord only knows how much more."
This February has let loose its whole pack of grizzly sky-hounds. Unbroken severe weather. Health has not returned as rapidly as was promised, and I have not ventured outside the yard. But it is a pleasure to chronicle the beginning of an acquaintanceship between his proud eminence the young cardinal and myself. For a long time he would have naught to do with me, fled as I approached, abandoned the evergreens altogether and sat on the naked tree-tops, as much as threatening to quit the place altogether if I did not leave him in peace. Surely he is the shyest of his kind, and, to my fancy, the most beautiful; and therefore Nature seems to have stored him with extra caution towards archenemy.
But in the old human way I have taken advantage of his necessities. The north wind has been by friend against him. I have called in the aid of sleets and snows, have besieged him in his white castle behind the glittering array of his icicles with threats of starvation. So one day, dropping like a glowing coal down among the other birds, he snatched a desperate hasty meal from the public poor-house table that I had spread under the trees.
It is the first surrender that decides. Since then some progress has been made in winning his confidence, but the struggle going on in his nature is plain enough still. At times he will rush away from me in utter terror; at others he lets me draw a little nearer, a little nearer, without moving form a limb; and now, after a month of persuasion, he begins to discredit the experience which he has inherited from centuries upon centuries of ancestors. In all that I have done I have tried to say to him: "Don't judge me by mankind in general. With me you are safe. I pledge myself to defend you from enemies, high and low."
This had not escaped the notice of Georgiana at the window, and more than once she had let her work drop to watch my patient progress and to bestow upon me a rewarding smile. Is there nearly always sadness in it, or is the sadness in my eyes? If Georgiana's brother is giving her trouble, I'd like to take a hand-axe to his feet. I suppose I shall never know whether he cut her foot in two. She carries the left one a little peculiarly; but so many women do that.
Sometimes, when the day's work is over and the servant is gone, Georgiana comes to the window and looks away towards the sunsets of winter, her hands clasped behind her back, her motionless figure in relief against the darkness within, her face white and still. Being in the shadow of my own room, so that she could not see me, and knowing that I ought not to do it, but unable to resist, I have softly taken up the spy-glass which I use in the study of birds, and have drawn Georgiana's face nearer to me, holding it there till she turns away. I have noted the traces of pain, and once the tears which she could not keep back and was too proud to heed. Then I have sat before my flickering embers, with I know not what all but ungovernable yearning to be over there in the shadowy room with her, and, whether she would or not, to fold my arms around her, and, drawing her face against mine, whisper: "What is it Georgiana? And why must it be?"
XIII
The fountains of the great deep opened. A new heaven, a new earth. Georgiana has broken her engagement with her cousin. Mrs. Cobb let it out in the strictest confidence to Mrs. Walters. Mrs. Walters, with stricter confidence still, has told me only.
The West-Pointer had been writing for some months in regard to the wild behavior of his cousin. This grew worse, and the crisis came. Georgiana snapped her thread and put up her needle. He travelled all the way down her to implore. I met him at the gate as he left the house—a fine, straight, manly, handsome young fellow, with his face pale with pain, and his eyes flashing with anger—and bade him a long, affectionate, inward God-speed as he hurried away. It was her father's influence. He had always wished for this union. Ah, the evils that come to the living from the wrongful wishes of the dead! Georgiana is so happy now, since she has been forced to free herself, that spring in this part of the United States seems to have advanced about half a month.
"What on earth will she do with all those clothes?" inquired Mrs.
Walters the other night, eying me with curious impressiveness.
"They ought to be hanged," I said, promptly.
There is a young scapegrace who passes my house morning and evening with his cows. He has the predatory instincts of that being who loves to call himself the image of his Maker, and more than once has given annoyance, especially last year, when he robbed a damson-tree of a brood of Baltimore orioles. This winter and spring his friendly interest in my birds has increased, and several times I have caught him skulking among the pines. Last night what should I stumble on but a trap, baited and sprung, under the cedar-tree in which the cardinal roosts. I was up before daybreak this morning. Awhile after the waking of the birds here comes my young bird-thief, creeping rapidly to his trap. As he stooped I had him by the collar, and within the next five minutes I must have set up in his nervous system a negative disposition to the caging of red-birds that will descend as a positive tendency to all the generations of his offspring.
All day this meditated outrage has kept my blood up. Think of this beautiful cardinal beating his heart out against maddening bars, or caged for life in some dark city street, lonely, sick, and silent, bidden to sing joyously of that high world of light and liberty where once he sported! Think of the exquisite refinement of cruelty in wishing to take him on the eve of May!
It is hardly a fancy that something as loyal as friendship has sprung up between this bird and me. I accept his original shyness as a mark of his finer instincts; but, like the nobler natures, when once he found it possible to give his confidence, how frankly and fearlessly has it been given. The other day, brilliant, warm, windless, I was tramping across the fields a mile from home, when I heard him on the summit of a dead sycamore, cleaving the air with stroke after stroke of his long melodious whistle, as with the swing of a silken lash. When I drew near he dropped down from bough to bough till he reached the lowest, a few feet from where I stood, and showed by every movement how glad he was to see me. We really have reached the understanding that the immemorial persecution of his race by mine is ended; and now more than ever my fondness settles about him, since I have found his happiness plotted against, and have perhaps saved his very life. It would be easy to trap him. His eye should be made to distrust every well-arranged pile of sticks under which lurks a morsel.
To=night I called upon Georgiana and sketched the arrested tragedy of the morning. She watched me curiously, and then dashed into a little treatise on the celebrated friendships of man for the lower creatures, in fact and fiction, from camels down to white mice. Her father must have been a remarkably learned man. I didn't like this. It made me somehow feel as though I were one of Asp's Fables, or were being translated into English as that old school-room horror of Androclus and the Lion. In the bottom of my soul I don't believe that Georgiana cares for birds, or knows the difference between a blackbird and a crow. I am going to send her a little story, "The Passion of the Desert." Mrs. Walters is now confident that Georgiana regrets having broken off her engagement. But then Mrs. Walters can be a great fool when she puts her whole mind to it.
XIV
In April I commence to scratch and dig in my garden.
To-day, as I was raking off my strawberry bed, Georgiana, whom I have not seen since the night when she satirized me, called from the window:
"What are you going to plant this year?"
"Oh, a little of everything," I answered, under my hat. "What are you going to plant this year?"
"Are you going to have many strawberries?"
"It's too soon to tell: they haven't bloomed yet. It's too soon to tell when they do bloom. Sometimes strawberries are like women: Whole beds full of showy blossoms; but when the time comes to be ripe and luscious, you can't find them."
"Indeed."
"'Tis true, 'tis pity."
I had always supposed that to a Southern gentleman woman was not a berry but a rose. What does he hunt for in woman as much as bloom and fragrance? But I don't belong to the rose-order of Southern women myself. Sylvia does. Why did you send me that story?"
"Didn't you like it?"
"No. A woman couldn't care for a story about a man and a tigress. Either she would feel that she was too much left out, or suspect that she was too much put in. The same sort of story about a lion and a woman—that would be better."
I raked in silence for a minute, and when I looked up Georgiana was gone. I remember her saying once that children should be kept tart; but now and then I fancy that she would like to keep even a middle-aged man in brine. Who knows but that in the end I shall sell my place to the Cobbs and move away?
Five more days of April, and then May! For the last half of this light-and-shadow month, when the clouds, like schools of changeable lovely creatures, seem to be playing and rushing away through the waters of the sun, life to me has narrowed more and more to the red-bird, who gets tamer and tamer with habit, and to Georgiana, who gets wilder and wilder with happiness. The bird fills the yard with brilliant singing; she fills her room with her low, clear songs, hidden behind the window-curtains, which are now so much oftener and so needlessly closed. I work myself nearly to death in my garden, but she does not open them. The other day the red-bird sat in a tree near by, and his notes floated out on the air like scarlet streamers. Georgiana was singing, so low that I was making no noise with my rake in order to hear; and when he began, before I realized what I was doing, I had seized a brickbat and hurled it, barely missing him, and driving him away. He did not know what to make of it; neither did I; but as I raised my eyes I saw that Georgiana had opened the curtains to listen to him, and was closing them with her eyes on my face, and a look on hers that has haunted me ever since.
April the 26th. It's of no use. To-morrow night I will go to see
Georgiana, and ask her to marry me.
April 28th. Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. I am not the least sick, but I am not feeling at all well. So have made a will, and left everything to Mrs. Walters. She has been over five times to-day, and this evening sat by me a long time, holding my hand and smoothing my forehead, and urging me to try a cream poultice—a mustard-plaster—a bowl of gruel—a broiled chicken.
I believe Georgiana thinks I'll ask her again. Not if I lived by her through eternity! Thy rod and Thy staff—they comfort me.
XV
A Poor devil will ask a woman to marry him. She will refuse him. The day after she will meet him as serenely as if he had asked her for a pin.
It is now May 15th, and I have not spoken to Georgians when I've had a chance. She has been entirely too happy, to judge from her singing, for me to get along with under the circumstances. But this morning, as I was planting a hedge inside my fence under her window, she leaned over and said, as though nothing were wrong between us, "What are you planting?"
I have sometimes thought that Georgiana can ask more questions than
Socrates.
"A hedge."
"What for?"
"To grow."
"What do you want it to grow for?"
"My garden is too public. I wish to be protected from outsiders."
"Would it be the same thing if I were to nail up this window? That would be so much quicker. It will be ten years before your hedge is high enough to keep me from seeing you. And even then, you know, I could move up-stairs. But I am so sorry to be an outsider."
"I merely remarked that I was planting a hedge."
When Georgiana spoke again her voice was lowered: "Would you open a gateway for me into your garden, to be always mine, so that I might go out and come in, and never another human soul enter it?"
Now Jacob had often begged me to cut him a private gateway on that side of the garden, so that only he might come in and go out; and I had refused, since I did not wish him to get to me so easily with his complaints. Besides, a gate once opened, who may not use it? and I was indignant that Georgiana should lightly ask anything at my hands; therefore I looked quickly and sternly up at her and said, "I will not."
Afterwards the thought rushed over me that she had not spoken of any gateway through my garden fence, but of another one, mystical, hidden, infinitely more sacred. For her voice descended almost in a whisper, and her face, as she bent down towards me, had on it I know not what angelic expression. She seemed floating to me from heaven.
May 17th. To-day I put a little private gate through my fence under Georgiana's window, as a sign to her. Balaam's beast that I am! Yes, seven times more than the inspired ass.
As I passed to-day, I noticed Georgiana looking down at the gate that I made yesterday. She held a flower to her nose and eyes, but behind the leaves I detected that she was laughing.
"Good-morning!" she called to me. "What did you cut that ugly hole in your fence for?"
"That's not an ugly hole. That's a little private gateway."
"But what's the little private gateway for?"
"Oh, well! You don't understand these matters. I'll tell your mother."
"My mother is too old. She no longer stoops to such things. Tell me!
"Impossible!"
"I'm dying to know!"
"What will you give me?"
"Anything—this flower!"
"But what would the flower stand for in that case? A little pri—"
"Nothing. Take it!" and she dropped it lightly on my face and disappeared. As I stood twirling it ecstatically under my nose, and wondering how I could get her to come back to the window, the edge of a curtain was lifted, and a white hand stole out and softly closed the shutters.
In the evening Sylvia went in to a concert of the school, which was to be held at the Court-house, a chorus of girls being impaneled in the jury-box, and the principal, who wears a little wig, taking her seat on the woolsack. I promised to have the very pick of the garden ready, and told Sylvia to come to the arbor the last thing before starting. She wore big blue rosettes in her hair, and at that twilight hour looked as lovely, soft, and pure as moonshine; so that I lost control of myself and kissed her twice—once for Georgiana and once for myself. Surely it must have been Sylvia's first experience. I hope so. Yet she passed through it with the composure of a graduate of several year's standing. But, then, women inherit a great stock of fortitude from their mothers in this regard, and perpetually add to it by their own dispositions. Ought I to warn Georgiana—good heavens! in a general way, of course—that Sylvia should be kept away from sugar, and well under the influence of vulgar fractions?
It made me feel uncomfortable to see her go tripping out of her front gate on the arm of a youth. Can it be possible the he would try to do what I did? Men differ so in their virtues, and are so alike in their transgressions. This forward gosling displayed white duck pantaloons, brandished pumps on his feet, which looked flat enough to have been webbed, and was scented as to his marital locks with a far-reaching pestilence of bergamot and cinnamon.
After they were gone I strolled back to my arbor and sat down amid the ruins of Sylvia's flowers. The nigh was mystically beautiful. The moon seemed to me to be softly stealing down the sky to kiss Endymion. I looked across towards Georgiana's window. She was there, and I slipped over and stood under it.
"Georgiana," I whispered, "were you, too, looking at the moon?"
"Part of the time," she said, sourly. "Isn't it permitted?"
"Sylvia left her scissors in the arbor, and I can't find them."
"She'll find them to-morrow."
"If they get wet, you know, they'll rust."
"I keep something to take rust off."
"Georgiana, I've got something to tell you about Sylvia."
"What? That you kissed her?"
"N—o! Not that, exactly!"
"Good-night!"
May 21st. Again I asked Georgiana to be mine. I am a perfect fool about her. But she's coming my way at last—God bless her!
May 24th. I renewed my suit to Georgiana.
May 27th. I besought Georgiana to hear me.
May 28th. For the last time I offered my hand in marriage to the elder Miss Cobb. Now I am done with her forever. I am no fool.
May 29th. Oh, damn Mrs. Walters!
XVI
This morning, the 3d of June, I went out to pick the first dish of strawberries for my breakfast. As I was stooping down I heard a timid, playful voice at the window like the echo of a year ago: "Are you the gardener?"
Since Georgiana will not marry me, if she would only let me alone!
"Old man, are you the gardener?"
"Yes, I'm the gardener. I know what you are."
"How much do you ask for your strawberries?"
"They come high. Nothing of mine is to be as cheap hereafter as it has been."
"I am so glad—for your sake. I should like to possess something of yours, but I suppose everything is too high now."
"Entirely too high!"
"If I only could have foreseen that there would be an increase of value! As for me, I have felt that I am getting cheaper lately. I may have to give myself away soon. If I only knew of some one who loved the lower animals."
"The fox, for instance?"
"Yes; do you know of any one who would accept the present of a fox?"
"Ahem! I wouldn't mind having a tame fox. I don't care much for wild foxes."
"Oh, this one would get tame—in time."
"I don't believe I know of any one just at present."
"Very well. Sylvia will get the highest mark in arithmetic. And Joe is distinguishing himself at West Point. That's what I wanted to tell you. I'll send you over the cream and sugar, and hope you will enjoy all your berries. We shall buy some in the market-house next week."
Later in the forenoon I sent the strawberries over to Georgiana. I have a variety that is the shape of the human heart, and when ripe it matches in color that brighter current of the heart through which runs the hidden history of our passions. All over the top of the dish I carefully laid these heart-shaped berries, and under the biggest one, at the very top, I slipped this little note: "Look at the shape of them, Georgiana! I send them all to you. They are perishable."
This afternoon Georgiana sent back the empty dish, and inside the napkin was this note: "They are exactly the shape and color of my emery needle-bag. I have been polishing my needles in it for many years."
Later, as I was walking to town, I met Georgiana and her mother coming out. No explanation had ever been made to the mother of that goose of a gate in our division fence; and as Georgiana had declined to accept the sign, I determined to show her that the gate could now stand for something else. So I said: "Mrs. Cobb, when you send your servants over for green corn, you can let them come through that little gate. It will be more convenient."
Only, I was so angry and confused that I called her Mrs. Corn, and said that when she sent her little Cobbs over . . . my green servants, etc.
After Georgiana's last treatment of me I resolved not to let her talk to me out of her window. So about nine o'clock this morning I took a Negro boy and set him to picking the berries, while I stood by, directing him in a deep, manly voice as to the best way of managing that intricate business. Presently I heard Georgiana begin to sing to herself behind the curtains.
"Hurry up and fill that cup," I said to him, savagely. "And that will do this morning. You can go to the mill. The meal's nearly out."
When he was gone I called, in an undertone: "Georgiana! Come to the window! Please! Oh, Georgiana!"
But the song went on. What was the matter? I could not endure it. There was one way by which perhaps she could be brought. I whistled long and loud again and again. The curtains parted a little space.
"I was merely whistling to the bird," I said.
"I knew it," she answered, looking as I had never seen her. "Whenever you speak to him your voice is full of confidence and of love. I believe in it and like to hear it."
"What do you mean, Georgiana?" I cried, imploringly.
"Ah, Adam!" she said, with a rush of feeling. It was the first time she had ever called me by name. She bent her face down. Over it there passed a look of sweetness and sadness indescribably blended. "Ah, Adam! you have asked me many times to marry you! Make me believe once that you love me! Make me feel that I could trust myself to you for life!"
"What else can I do?" I answered, stirred to the deepest that was in me, throwing my arms backward, and standing with an open breast into which she might gaze.
And she did search my eyes and face in silence.
"What more," I cried again, "in God's name?"
She rested her face on her palm, looking thoughtfully across the yard. Over there the red-bird was singing. Suddenly she leaned down towards me. Love was on her face now. But her eyes held mine with the determination to wrest from them the last truth they might contain, and her voice trembled with doubt:
"Would you put the red-bird in a cage for me? Would you be willing to do that for me, Adam?"
At those whimsical, cruel words I shall never be able to reveal all that I felt—the surprise, the sorrow, the pain. Scenes of boyhood flashed through my memory. A conscience built up through years of experience stood close by me with admonition. I saw the love on her face, the hope with which she hung upon my reply, as though it would decide everything between us. I did not hesitate; my hands dropped to my side, the warmth died out of my heart as out of spent ashes, and I answered her, with cold reproach,
"I—will—not!"
The color died out of her face also. Her eyes still rested on mine, but now with pitying sadness.
"I feared it," she murmured, audibly, but to herself, and the curtains fell together.
Four days have passed. Georgiana has cast me off. Her curtains are closed except when she is not there. I have tried to see her; she excuses herself. I have written; my letters come back unread. I have lain in wait for her on the streets; she will not talk with me. The tie between us has been severed. With her it could never have been affection.
And for what? I ask myself over and over and over—for what? Was she jealous of the bird, and did she require that I should put it out of the way? Sometimes women do that. Did she take that means of forcing me to a test? Women do that. Did she wish to show her power over me, demanding the one thing she knew would be the hardest for me to grant? Women do that. Did she crave the pleasure of seeing me do wrong to humor her caprice? Women do that. But not one these things can I even associate with the thought of Georgiana. I have in every way to have her explain, to explain myself. She will neither give nor receive an explanation.
I had supposed that her unnatural request would have been the end of my love, but it has not; that her treatment since would have fatally stung my pride, but it has not. I understand neither; forgive both; love her now with that added pain which comes from a man's discovering that the woman dearest to him must be pardoned—pardoned as long as he shall live.
Never since have I been able to look at the red-bird with the old gladness. He is the reminder of my loss. Reminder? Do I ever forget? Am I not thinking of that before his notes lash my memory at dawn? All day can they do more than furrow deeper the channel of unforgetfulness? Little does he dream what my friendship for him has cost me. But this solace I have at heart—that I was not even tempted to betray him.
Three days more have passed. No sign yet that Georgiana will relent soon or ever. Each day the strain becomes harder to bear. My mind has dwelt upon my last meeting with her, until the truth about it weavers upon my memory like vague, uncertain shadows. She doubted my love for her. What proof was it she demanded? I must stop looking at the red-bird, lying here and there under the trees, and listening to him as he sings above me. My eyes devour him whenever he crosses my path with an uncomprehended fascination that is pain. How gentle he has become, and how, without intending it, I have deepened the perils of his life by the very gentleness that I have brought upon him. Twice already the fate of his species has struck at him, but I have pledged myself to be his friend. This is his happiest season; a few days now, and he will hear the call of his young in the nest.
I shut myself in my workshop in the yard this morning. I did not wish my servants to know. In there I made a bird-trap such as I had often used when a boy. And late this afternoon I went to town and bought a bird-cage. I was afraid the merchant would misjudge me, and explained. He scanned my face silently. To-morrow I will snare the red-bird down behind the pines long enough to impress on his memory a life-long suspicion of every such artifice, and then I will set him free again in his wide world of light. Above all things, I must see to it that he does not wound himself or have the least feather broken.
It is far past midnight now, and I have not slept or wished for slumber.
Constantly since darkness came on I have been watching Georgiana's window for the light of her candle, but there has been no kindly glimmer yet. The only radiance shed upon the gloom outside comes from the heavens. Great cage-shaped white clouds are swung up to the firmament, and within these pale, gentle, imprisoned lightnings flutter feebly to escape, fall back, rise, and try again and again, and fail.
. . . A little after dark this evening I carried the red-bird over to Georgiana. . . .
I have seen her so little of late that I did not know she had been away from home for days. But she expected to-night, or, at furthest, to-morrow morning. I left the bird with the servant at the door, who could hardly believe what he saw. As I passed out of my front gate on my way there, the boy who returns about that time from the pasture for his cows joined me as I hurried along, attracted by the fluttering of the bird in the cage.
"Is it the red-bird? I tried to ketch him once," he said, with entire forgiveness of me, as having served him right, "but I caught something else. I'll never forget that whipping. Oh, but wouldn't I like to have him! Mr. Moss, you wouldn't mind my trying to ketch one of them little bits o' brown fellows, would you, that hops around under them pine-trees? They ain't no account to nobody. Oh my! but wouldn't I like to have him! May I bring my trap some time, and will you help me to ketch one o' them little bits o' brown ones? You can beat me ketchin' 'em!"
Several times to-night I have gone across and listened under Georgiana's window. The servant must have set the cage in her room, for, as I listened, I am sure I heard the red-bird beating his head and breast against the wires. Awhile ago I went again, and did not hear him. I waited a long time. . . . He may be quieted. . . .
Ah, if any one had said to me that I would ever do what I have done, with what full, deep joy could I have throttled the lie in his throat! I put the trap under one of the trees where I have been used to feed him. When it fell he was not greatly frightened. He clutched the side of it, and looked out at me. My own mind supplied his words: "Help! I'm caught! Take me out! You promised!" When I transferred him to the cage, for a moment his confidence lasted still. He mounted the perch, shook his plumage, and spoke out bravely and cheerily. Then all at once came on the terror.
The dawn came on this morning with its old splendor. The birds in my yard, as of old, poured forth their songs. But those loud, long, clear, melodious, deep-hearted, passionate, best-loved notes! As the chorus swelled from shadowy shrubs and vines to the sparking tree-tops I listened for some sound from Georgiana's room, but over there I saw only the soft, slow flapping of the white curtains like signals of distress.
Towards ten o'clock, wandering restless, I snatched up a book, which I had no wish to read, and went to the arbor where I had so often discoursed to Sylvia about children's cruelty to birds. Through the fluttering leaves the sunlight dripped as a weightless shower of gold, and the long pendants of young fruit swayed gently in their cool waxen greenness. Where some rotting planks crossed the top of the arbor a blue-jay sat on her coarse nest; and presently the mate flew to her with a worm, and then talked to her in a low voice, as much as saying that they must now leave the place forever. I was thinking how love softens even the voice of this file-throated screamer, when along the garden walk came the rustle of a woman's clothes, and, springing up, I stood face to face with Georgiana.
"What have you done?" she implored.
"What have you done? I answered as quickly.
"Oh, Adam, Adam! You have killed it! How could you? How could you?"
". . . Is he dead, Georgiana? Is he dead?. . ."
I forgot everything else, and pulling my hat down over my eyes, turned from her in the helpless shock of silence that came with those irreparable words.
Then in ungovernable anger, suffering, remorse, I turned upon her where she sat: "It is you who killed him! Why do you come here to blame me? And now you pretend to be sorry. You felt no pity when pity would have done some good. Trifler! Hypocrite!
"It is false!" she cried, her words flashing from her whole countenance, her form drawn up to repel the shock of the blow.
"Did you not ask me for him?"
"No!"
"Oh, deny it all! It is a falsehood—invented by me on the spot.
You know nothing of it! You did not ask me to do this! And when
I have yielded, you have not run to reproach me here and to cry,
'How could you? How could you?'"
"No! No! Every word of it—"
"Untruth added to it all! Oh, that I should have been so deceived, blinded, taken in!"
"Adam!"
"Lovely innocence! It is too much! Go away!"
"I will not stand this any longer!" she cried. "I will go away; but not till I have told you why I have acted as I have."
"It is too late for that! I do not care to hear!"
"Then you shall hear!" she replied. "You shall know that it is because I have believed you capable of speaking to me as you have just spoken; believed you at heart unsparing and unjust. You think I asked you to do what you have done? No! I asked you whether you would be willing to do it; and when you said you would not, I saw then—by your voice, your eyes, your whole face and manner—that you would. Saw it as plainly at that moment, in spite of your denial, as I see it now—the cruelty in you, the unfaithfulness, the willingness to betray. It was for this reason—not because I heard you refuse, but because I saw you consent—that I could not forgive you."
She paused abruptly and looked across into my face. What she may now have read in it I do not know. Then anger swept her on:
"How often had I not heard you bitter and contemptuous towards people because they are treacherous, cruel! How often have you talked of your love of nature, of our inhumanity towards lower creatures! But what have you done?
"You set your fancy upon one of these creatures, lie in wait for it, beset it with kindness, persevere in overcoming its wildness. You are amused, delighted, proud of your success. One day—you remember?—it sang as you had always wished to hear it. It annoyed you, and you threw a stone at it. With a little less angry aim you would have killed it. I have never seen anything more inhuman. How do I know that some day you would not be tired of me, and throw a stone at me? When a woman submits to this once, she will have them thrown at her whenever she sings at the wrong time, and she will never know when the right time is.
"Then you thought you were asked to sacrifice it, and now you have done that. How do I know that some day you might not be tempted to sacrifice me?" She paused, her voice breaking, and remained silent, as if unable to get beyond that thought.
"If you have finished," I said, very quietly, "I have something to say to you, and we need not meet after this.
"I trapped the bird; you trapped me. I understood you to ask something of me, to cast me off when I refused it. Such was my faith in you that beneath your words I did not look for a snare. How hard it was for me to forgive you what you asked is my own affair now; but forgive you I did. How hard it was to grant it, that also is now, and will always be, my own secret. I beg you merely to believe this: knowing it to be all that you have described—and far more than you can ever understand—still, I did it. Had you demanded of me something worse, I should have granted that. If you think a man will not do wrong for a woman, you are mistaken. If you think men always love the wrong that they do for the women whom they love, you are mistaken again.
"You have held up my faults to me. I knew them before. I have not loved them. Do not think that I am trying to make a virtue out of anything I say; but in all my thoughts of you there has been no fault of yours that I have not hidden from my sight, and have not resolved as best I could never to see. Yet do not dream that I have found you faultless.
"You fear I might sacrifice you to something else. It is possible. Every man resists temptation only to a certain point; every man has his price. It is a risk you will run with any.
"If you doubt that a man is capable of sacrificing one thing that he loves to another that he loves more, tempt him, lie in wait for his weakness, ensnare him in the toils of his greater passion, and learn the truth.
"I make no defence—believe all that you say. But had you loved me, I might have been all this, and it would have been nothing."
With this I walked slowly out of the arbor, but Georgiana stood beside me. Her light touch was on my arm.
"Let me see things clearly!"
"You have a lifetime in which to see things clearly," I answered.
"How can that concern me now?" And I passed on into the house.
During the morning I wandered restless. For a while I lay on the grass down behind the pines. How deep and clear are the covered springs of memory! All at once it was a morning in my boyhood on my father's farm. I, a little Saul of Tarsus among the birds, was on my way to the hedge-rows and woods, as to Damascus, breathing out threatenings and slaughter. Then suddenly the childish miracle, which no doubt had been preparing silently within my nature, wrought itself out; for from the distant forest trees, from the old orchard, from thicket and fence, from the wide green meadows, and down out of the depths of the blue sky itself, a vast chorus of innocent creatures sang to my newly opened ears the same words: "Why persecutest thou me?" One sang it with indignation; another with remonstrance; still another with resignation; others yet with ethereal sadness or wild elusive pain. Once more the house-wren aloud, "per-se-cu-test—per-se-cu-test—per-se-cu-test—per-se-cu-test!" And as I peeped into the brush-pile, again the brown thrush, building within, said, "thou—thou—thou!"
Through all the years since I had thought myself changed, and craved no greater glory than to be accounted the chief of their apostles. But now I was stained once more with the old guilt, and once more I could hear the birds in my yard singing that old, old chorus against man's inhumanity.
Towards the middle of the afternoon I went away across the country—by any direction; I cared not what. On my way back I passed through a large rear lot belonging to my neighbors, and adjoining my own, in which is my stable. There has lately been imported into this part of Kentucky from England the much-prized breed of the beautiful white Berkshire. As I crossed the lot, near the milk-trough, ash-heap, and paring of fruit and vegetables thrown from my neighbor's kitchen, I saw a litter of these pigs having their awkward sport over some strange red plaything, which one after another of them would shake with all its might, root and tear at, or tread into greater shapelessness. It was all there was left of him.
I entered my long yard. If I could have been spared the sight of that! The sun was setting. Around me was the last peace and beauty of the world. Through a narrow avenue of trees I could see my house, and on its clustering vines fell the angry red of the sun darting across the cool green fields.
The last hour of light touches the birds as it touches us. When they sing in the morning, it is with the happiness of the earth; but as the shadows fall strangely about them, and the helplessness of the night comes on, their voices seem to be lifted up like the loftiest poetry of the human spirit, with sympathy for realities and mysteries past all understanding.
A great choir was hymning now. On the tops of the sweet old honeysuckles the cat-birds; robins in the low boughs of maples; on the high limb of the elm the silvery-throated lark, who had stopped as he passed from meadow to meadow; on a fence rail of the distant wheat-field the quail—and many another. I walked to and fro, receiving the voice of each as a spear hurled at my body. The sun sank. The shadows rushed on and deepened. Suddenly, as I turned once more in my path, I caught sight of the figure of Georgiana moving straight towards me from the direction of the garden. She was bareheaded, dressed in white; and she advanced over the smooth lawn, through evergreens and shrubs, with a gentle grace and dignity of movement such as I had never beheld. I kept my weary pace, and when she came up I did not lift my eyes.
"Adam!" she said, with gentle reproach. I stood still then, but with my face turned away.
"Forgive me!" All girlishness was gone out of her voice. It was the woman at last.
I turned my face farther from her, and we stood in silence.
"I have suffered enough, Adam," she pleaded.
I answered quietly, doggedly, for there was nothing left in me to appeal to:
"I am glad we can part kindly. . . . Neither of us may care much for the kindness now, but we will not be sorry hereafter. . . . The quarrels, the mistakes, the right and the wrong of our lives, the misunderstandings—they are so strange, so pitiful, so full of pain, and come so soon to nothing." And I lifted my hat, and took the path towards my house.
There was a point ahead where it divided, the other branch leading towards the little private gate through which Georgiana had come. Just before reaching the porch I looked that way, with the idea that I should see Georgiana's white figure moving across the lawn; but I discovered that she was following me. Mounting my door-steps, I turned. She had paused on the threshold. I waited. At length she said, in a voice low and sorrowful:
"And you are not going to forgive me, Adam?"
"I do forgive you!" The silence fell and lasted. I no longer saw her face. At last her despairing voice barely reached me again:
"And—is—that—all?"
I had no answer to make, and sternly waited for her to go.
A moment longer she lingered, then turned slowly away; and I watched her figure growing fainter and fainter till it was lost. I sprang after her; my voice rang out hollow, and broke with terror and pain and longing:
"Georgiana! Georgiana!"
"Oh, Adam, Adam!" I heard her cry, with low, piercing tenderness, as she ran back to me through the darkness.
When we separated we lighted fresh candles and set them in our windows, to burn a pure pathway of flame across the intervening void. Henceforth we are like poor little foolish children, so sick and lonesome in the night without one another. Happy, happy night to come when one short candle will do for us both!
. . . Ah, but the long, long silence of the trees! . . .