"See, madam," she cried, "here is the Farm! And there is my little window in the roof! And there are the doves above the long barn."
She looked and saw that all these things were so, but great weariness filled her and she could think of nothing but the long way back, for she knew that they had come a great way from the city.
"This may all be well for you, child, but it is not the same to me," she said sadly.
"And why not, madam? The Dame is kind to all," the little maid replied, and urged the donkey on.
"What is your name?" she asked, looking for the first time at her guide in the full light of early day. The girl was quaintly dressed, she saw, with a black bodice laced across her young body, a shorter skirt than grown girls wear now, and a scarlet ribbon twisted among the long, dark braids that hung down her shoulders. She had travelled much in older countries than her own and to her eyes this girl had the air of a winsome little peasant that knew her simple station and was happy in it.
"Joan is my name, madam—and I have been told that the miller's Dyrk has called the new brown foal for me—the finest one at the Farm!" she said with a bubble of laughter.
"Now, madam, we are here at last. Let me help you down, and we will surprise the Dame for once, for not often does one catch her asleep. She will be the first always—and here she is!"
They were in the very dooryard of a thriving, deep-eaved farm-house. Asters glistened with dew about the doorstep, a straw-filled kennel for the great hound stood close by, the cocks welcomed in the day from behind a trim green hedge, and slowly across the back-stretching meadow came home a file of sleek, heavy-uddered cattle. She stared at them unseeing, for her head reeled, but Joan mistook her staring and began to prattle:
"You are surprised, no doubt, madam, to see the cows come in from the pasture this early, but here at the Farm the air is so dry and pure that they leave them in the fields all night, and the milk tastes of honey and meadow grass, the miller's Dyrk does say——"
"Child, child, will you never be done with your chatter? The stranger is sick—too sick, I see, to mind herself of the Farm's cows. Help me to take her in!"
"You must be the Dame," she said, and tried to look steadily at the woman who came out of the oaken door to lead her in. She was a strong, sturdy woman, neither tall nor short, with brown, smooth hair and a brown, smooth skin with red blood beneath. Her eyes were like brook water in the sun, that runs over clean pebbles, and she was deep-chested, and stood firm in her quaintly buckled shoes. She wore a chintz gown dyed with little red and yellow flowers that was looped up over the hips, and at her waist hung a bunch of heavy, wrought keys.
"Nay, now, never try to talk," she said, and put a strong arm about her drooping guest. "You are past talking, poor thing! You have done far too much—for others, I'll be bound. Rest first, and then talk after that. Help her up the stairs, now, Joan, and hush thy chatter."
"But you do not know why I am here," she murmured, leaning hard upon the black oaken rail of the polished stair.
"I know you are here, do I not?" the Dame answered quietly; "I should not get you to bed the quicker, whatever I knew. Softly, Joan; softly!"
One last effort and they stood within a long, low-beamed chamber, whose leaded panes shone no more brightly than the polished floor below them. In the centre a great posted bed reared its snowy canopy, and copper jars of water and piles of linen and other washing gear reminded her that she was unworthy of that white bed. On the deep window-sill bloomed pots of gay flowers, and the tall chairs with winged backs were covered with dim prints pictured with strange birds and lions.
"Now," said the Dame, "undress her and into the bed!"
"But I am not clean," she said; "I am dusty from the street."
"Then we will wash you clean," said the Dame. "Joan, go get warm water, child, and the great copper, and make haste with fresh sheets; Lotte will help you."
Deftly she was undressed and her chilled body was chafed and rubbed till Joan and another girl came staggering under a great copper bowl a yard wide. They filled it with steaming water which, as she crouched in it, the Dame poured over her shaking shoulders.
"How white she is," the girls whispered; "how soft her skin must be!"
"Run Lotte," cried the Dame, "and bring me the ruby cordial from the cordial-room, and you, Joan, get the little copper pannikin and heat that bit of broth by the hob and warm the bedgown with the lace your mother made for me!"
The ruby cordial was poured into the bath and a sweet and penetrating odour filled the room. It seemed that her bones ceased to ache from that moment, and when, wrapped in the warmed gown, nestled in fragrant sheets, she sipped at the hot broth Joan held to her lips while Lotte braided her long hair, a peace she had not known fell down upon her, and pillowing her head gently she fell into a deep and restful sleep.
She was wakened by the cooing of many doves and the broad sun of middle-morning that streamed across her white bed. Her mind was as clear as the mind of a child and she laughed a little as she sprang from the great deep bed and put on the clean short petticoat and buckled shoes that lay beside it, glad that her own dusty garments were not there. She wound her long braids about her head and pinned a blue kerchief over her shoulders, then she slipped down the stairs and through the great kitchen with its twinkling pans and sanded stone floor. A woman, bent over the wide fireplace, turned her head in its white cap and spoke to her:
"Dame is in the dairy—'tis built over the brook. Perhaps you will take this with you?"
She lifted the willow-woven basket in her hand and went out through the door across the barnyard, where the doves preened themselves among the clean straw, and found the little stone house above the brook. All about her she heard the busy noises of the country morning; soft voices, men's calls, the stamping of farm horses, the clatter of the household ware, the splash of cleansing water poured, the hissing kettle; but she saw no one. It seemed to her that eyes were upon her and that pauses in the cheery bustle followed her as she walked, but whenever she stopped and tried to meet these eyes there was no one. She moved alone among the unseen workers, and yet she knew they watched her.
In the cool stone dairy the Dame stood at work, pressing and patting at the soft coloured butter. Beaded brown jars of cream were by her and great, fair pans of milk, mounds and balls of primrose-tinted butter, white cheeses wrapped in grape-leaves, clotted cream that quivered at a touch, tall pitchers of whey, loppered milk ready for the spoon and buttermilk in new-washed churns. Through the moist freshness of the stone room the brook ran, chuckling and lapping; great stones roughly mortared together made the floor on either side of it; the Dame stood high on wooden clogs and hummed a ballad wherein the birds sang in the morning, but at night the eggs were broken, and the wind was high and scattered the fledglings.
Even the freshness of her late rest in her heart, her eyes filled at the Dame's song, and often afterward she thought of it when the wind was rising.
"And did you rest well?" said the Dame to her when the song was done.
"Never so well since I was a child," she said. "I have come to thank you for all your care, and to ask you when you can send me home, for I have no idea where I am, and I am sure I have come a long way."
"A long way, indeed!" said the Dame, and looked at her strangely, but when she questioned her this busy Dame only smiled, and told her that it was good to hear of her freshening sleep but no surprise, since all made the same report of the Farm.
"It seems the air here is so pure that a few hours of it do more for the body than days of other parts of the countryside," she said, and when her visitor asked again, "But where am I?" she only answered:
"But are you not ready for your breakfast, then?"
"Indeed I am," said she, "but I fear I have come away from it, to find you."
"Nay," said the Dame, "you have brought it with you," and pointed to the basket. She opened it and spread the wheaten rolls, the jar of honey, the brown, new-laid egg and the clean, homespun napkin upon the Dame's table and ate with wonderful relish, supplying herself with sweet butter and yellow milk from the stores about her, and while she ate and the Dame worked, they talked.
"You must be very busy, Dame, to be up with the dawn," she said.
"Why, that is so," said the Dame, "but women must needs be busy, as you know well, I have no doubt."
She sighed and twisted her idle hands.
"I do not know that I can truly say I am always busy," she said thoughtfully, "but I know that I have much to do—so much that I cannot do it," and again she sighed.
"Why, that is odd," said the Dame, patting her butter; "I have so much to do that I must do it."
She knit her brows and tried to think of an answer, but the answers that came to her mind had a foolish sound as she tried them over, so she said nothing.
"The Farm lets no one rest," the Dame went on, "and you must know that everything you brought with you this morning, the willow basket, the napkin, the egg, the wheaten flour, the honey, all were made here, and that means much work for many hands."
Now this put her in mind of something she had thought of before.
"But surely this is not the usual fashion in this country," she said curiously, "nor your quaint-figured gowns, nor much else about the place, for that matter. All this labour in flax and willow and dairy-house seems like some old picture or some ancient song—who has devised it, pray?"
"Aye, we keep the old ways," said the Dame quietly; "there must be some to do it or they will be lost, I am thinking."
"But so near the city," she said, and again the Dame looked strangely at her.
"Are we so near, then?" said she.
She knit her brows and it seemed that her mind, so clear since she woke, was clouded as to all before that; only the feeling of some great trouble, some dusty hurry, some ruinous failure haunted her. Also for the first time that day she found herself afraid.
"You have not yet told me the name of this town," she said, trying to be calm.
"It is not a town, my dear, it is called the Farm," said the Dame, putting the finished rolls of butter in a brown crock; "there is no town near us."
"But there must be!" she persisted; "you are teasing me. There are always towns, and they are never far from each other in these parts."
"I do not know them, then," said the Dame, gathering her keys and leaving the dairy, "though in truth, my dear, I am a poor judge of such matters, for beyond the Farm—and it is large—I do not go, being too busy always."
"Do you mean," she cried, following through the barnyard, "that you spend all the seasons on this Farm? It is not possible!"
"And why is it not possible?" the Dame asked, looking at her for the first time a little sternly, and she saw that in spite of her smooth country skin she was a woman of middle age; "the seasons are all full. In the spring there is planting, in the summer there is picking, in the autumn there is storing, in the winter there is spinning."
Now these were simple words and plain to understand, and yet something about them troubled her greatly and she felt that she must find an answer for them or know no peace at all.
"That is all very well," she said quickly, "but you are leaving out something without which all the seasons are empty and the year a dull affair."
"And what is that, then?" asked the Dame.
"Pleasure," she said.
"I find pleasure in them all," the Dame said, "and so do those about me."
"But they are all work—they are things that must be done!" she cried, tugging at the Dame's sleeve as she crossed the kitchen threshold; "true pleasure is a thing apart—we must have both, surely."
The Dame blew a little silver whistle hanging among her keys and at once there was a bustle and a running and some dozen maids came hurrying from all parts of the rambling farm-house to hear her orders. But before she busied herself with these she spoke to her guest.
"My dear," she said, "if you come to my time of life and have not found your pleasure in your work, you will never find it in this world. Sit down and think of this."
She sat down upon a carven chest by the open window, where the asters sent out a spicy odour and the hum of bees was not too far distant, and dropped her chin into the cup of her hands and thought.
Meantime, the Dame laid out for each girl her task, not hurried nor yet slow, but so that each was started fairly.
"You, Lotte, order the cordial-room so that there is room for the new bottles and write them down in the store-book. Remember to leave no drippings nor spillings, nor do I look to see my best napkins used for this. Janet, find Big Hans and make the apple-cellar ready for the barrels. Lois, I warn you that I shall go through all the chambers soon, and if all is as well there as when last I peeped under the beds and through the panes and looked at my face in the coppers, when the shoemaker comes, after Michaelmas, there shall be a pair of trim red shoes for those busy feet, and no cost to your father. Trude, the old hen-wife has more of her aches and pains to-day, and you must feed the pullets their extra grain and see to the eggs. Elspeth, the linen is all in to-day and 'tis for you to count it. Joan, if thy sparrow's tongue can hold still for an hour, thou shalt come with me and give out the stores for the pantry and kitchen. Perhaps a bit of potted quince will hold thy teeth together. Hannah, I know, is wise and trusty, and can busy herself as I would, with no telling what and where. But I could not trust you two, Margot and Mary, and old Greta must keep you by her with the candle-work. And should she box your ears, come not into my storeroom with your cryings, but work the harder for it. You others, help in the kitchen, and make ready for the men when they are done with the apples, and hungry. If Will comes to ask about the ale, he may see me in the pantry, but I have no time for Dyrk and his accounts to-day. Nay, now, Sparrow, there is no need to pull at my skirt! 'Tis strange, indeed, that the miller's matters must always be looked into when thou art with me."
They scattered each to her work, and some sang together in rounds and catches and some were silent, but all grew quickly busy. There was but one idle, and she, ashamed of this and trying to still the fear that hung behind her thoughts, followed the fair-haired Elspeth to the linen-room and watched her lift the fragrant white matters from the deep willow crates and pile them on the deeper shelves among twists of blue lavender and strewings of old roses.
"Shall I trouble you by talking?" she asked her, and Elspeth shook her head shyly and answered:
"No, madam, except when I must count the piles, and then I will tell you."
"Do you always do this work?" she said.
"No, madam," Elspeth answered her, "the Dame will have each girl learn all manner of work, so we take it turn about. Before this I was at the washing, and beat the linen on the brook-stones—oh, it was fine to see the fresh air blow through it and sweeten all so quickly! Then Margot and Mary taught me clear-starching. Last year I tied the herbs and tended the herb-attic; I grew the rosemary and sweet-basil in my own garden, and Big Hans brought us marjoram. There is no thyme and summer savoury like the Dame's, though."
"And what does the Dame pay you for all this?" she asked.
"Each of us has a great piece of the fine weaving—enough for body-linen," said Elspeth, "and some of the coarser to lay aside for our chests; a gown and shoes at Christmas; a goose to send home at Michaelmas (and Dame always adds a good flitch of bacon—she is so generous, the Dame!) and a gold piece at Easter. When little Myrta was married she had a silk gown and a great bag of fine flour and pillows and mattress for her bed. And it is well known that Joan will have a silver porringer and spoons and the carved chest with real Damask napkins."
"And you have no sports—no games? You slave here the year round for a flitch of bacon and a bit of linen?"
"No, indeed, madam; it is not so! We are always having a treat! Why, think now: at Christmas, the holidays, the gifts, the carols and the games, with fiddler and spiced wine and all manner of cakes; at harvest, the great dance, the prizes, the ale; at Easter, the church trimming, the gold-pieces sent home and the pick of the lambs for the one that does best at Catechism (but that is the little ones); at mid-summer, the fairings——"
"And who come to these fairs?" she asked quickly.
Elspeth hung her head and coloured, glancing about as one caught in a trap.
"Enough of this nonsense!" the woman cried, upsetting the spotless linen angrily. "Tell me where I am and what game you play here! I will go myself and soon be quit of this wonderful Farm of yours and this masquerading Dame!"
"Elspeth," said the grave voice of the Dame herself, "you will be always at the talk, my child, and now you have made trouble, and you, my dear, if I were to tell you where you were, how would it help you to go elsewhere? Listen to me. Through yonder door you may go at this moment, but I advise you not to go without the great hound, for much is on the moors that is far from safe. And at the end he will only bring you here, for he knows no other way, and you would wander endlessly there."
She looked, and around the edge of the tilled land she saw mile upon mile of desolate moor. Rushing to the window at the end of the hall, she saw the pasture-land she had come through and beyond that a deep forest.
"But I came over water ..." she murmured, and the Dame said gravely:
"I know. All who come here come over water. But they do not go back over it."
Then her eyes grew wide with terror, not at the Dame's simple words, but at something strange that seemed to lie behind them, and she gave her hand to the Dame and walked quietly beside her to the orchard.
Here among the ripe fruit they sat down, the Dame busy at knitting, herself with twisted, idle hands, and she fought away her fear as she saw the stalwart men and the merry girls at work upon the clover-scented piles.
"Why am I afraid? These are simple people working—they are real; they talk and sing!" she said to herself, but her hands trembled and the high sun seemed to her more like the unreal glory of the coloured windows in some great church than the sun she knew.
Hardly was the Dame seated when two fine young boys ran toward her, struggling with each other to reach her first.
"Oh, mother, I have learned my book!" cried one, and the other, "Oh, dear mother, I can do the sum now!"
She kissed them fondly and told them she would hear them soon.
"And where are your sisters?" she asked them.
"Alda is among her doves and Grizel is coming to you for help with the hood she is knitting," said one, and the other:
"But May Ellen is with Joan down in the nut-bins, and mother, they are quarrelling about young Dyrk! Each will have it that he likes her best, the foolish things!"
"Run, then, Roger, and bring them to me," said the Dame; "they are o'er young for such quarrels. We will set them at the apples."
Now, before the Dame had gone once around her knitting she was called from it ten times. Would the Dame have them bring in the russets first? Would the Dame look to the new honey, for they dared not take off the bees alone? Would the Dame hear a sum? Would the Dame say which of two disputants had the right? Would the Dame see the miller? Would she take the pay for the gray mare? And such like questionings that left her alone not a moment.
She who sat idle plucked at the Dame's sleeve and spoke timidly to her.
"One could not work at some great matter, Dame, with so many calls aside from it, I think."
"I think so, too, my dear," the Dame answered her, "and that is why I will be knitting, which is no great matter from which to be called aside."
She bit her lip, and thought, and spoke again.
"Great laws must be made, Dame, and these who make them must keep away from these stinging gnats."
"I know that well," said the Dame, and looked straight at her, "but I, thank God, need never make great laws, but only teach my household to obey them."
She sighed, but spoke again.
"It is not only laws, Dame, but beautiful things the world over must not be disturbed in the making. You could not make a great picture or a great song with Roger and Grizel pulling you here and there."
"And that is true, too," the Dame said, "but I need not make great songs, thank God, but only teach them to my children."
"And still there must be great songs," she said.
"And still there must be great children," said the Dame.
"I know, I know!" she cried, and pressed her hands to her forehead. "I learned that once—in a deep wood. And I have the children. But I would make great pictures, too. Not instead of the children, but with them, Dame, with them!"
"You cannot, nor any other woman," said the Dame, and turned to her knitting.
"But if I tried, if I tried ..." she pleaded.
"It is not by trying that these things are done," said the Dame coldly, "Lotte will not lift the load of russets yonder though she break her back at it, little fool. See, now she is so tired that Hans must carry both them and her."
"She is a country girl," said the pale woman, eagerly.
"Outside and inside she is made after the pattern of yourself and all other women," said the Dame, "and the one truth is true for us all."
"Good Dame," she said, after a moment, while the wagons creaked through the orchard and the girls laughed as the sun slipped lower, "what if I strove no more for greatness, but only made me little pictures to pleasure a few that love me and myself?"
"Why, as for that," said the Dame more kindly—"have a care there, Roger, you will hurt your sister if you play too roughly with her!—as for that, I can see no harm in it. Neither can I see how it should be worth any woman's while, if the thing be not great, and she knows it. It is a child's game."
"That is true," she said bitterly, "though how you should know it who pass your days on a petty farm, far from the great world, I cannot see."
"If you come to my time of life, my dear, and still think that the world is great or petty by so much as it is near a farm or far from it, you will not be having much content in your old age," said the Dame. "Now I must put my mind upon the heel of this stocking."
She wept aloud and saw now that not for nothing had she come upon this secret Farm and that in this glowing orchard she was to learn her hardest lesson. The Dame spoke again, and finally.
"Listen!" she said, "for this is the way of it. No woman living will ever do a great work who could not have borne great children, and if she can bear great children she can do no other great work. Else she would be as God Almighty, who has made both the poet and the poem, the painter and his picture. For He made it before the painter could see it. Now, go and help them with the apples, for the sun is setting and there are yet a few to gather."
She stumbled forward and threw herself upon the fragrant heaps and toiled till the breath left her, nor did she talk any more to Elspeth, who worked beside her, nor to Joan who picked behind. Her back ached and her arms wearied with their load; her legs began again to tremble and her breath came short. And all the time her brows were knotted with a teasing thought and her lips moved ceaselessly. Suddenly she rushed toward the placid Dame and fell on her knees before her.
"Oh, Dame," she cried, "must we always labour so? Can we never achieve, but must we ever do those tasks which the night will undo again? These apples will not stand for the world to see that I picked them; your dairy work is unwoven like a dream. Must it be so?"
"My dear," said the Dame, and her smile was sweeter than the sunlight through the coloured boughs, "it must be always so. Even as the day dies every night and is born with the dawn; even as the orchard leaves but to blossom and blossoms but to fruit, and all is to do another year; even as God makes the harvest for us to spoil, and smiles and makes another; so must women weave what the year will wear and wash what the day will soil. And man, her greatest work, will one day die and moulder into roses that other men shall one day pick. Our men-children finish their lovely toys and set them on the shelf, but our work is too great that we should ever finish it; it is so great that it must needs be made of many tiny matters, done now and again like the growing rains and sheltering snows. We can never be at rest—till God himself rests. Do you understand what I would be saying?"
She wept and laid her head in the Dame's lap and the yellow apples fell about her knees as she knelt. But she answered:
"Yes, dear Dame, I understand. But, oh, Dame, why is it so?"
"I do not know, my dear," answered the Dame, "but I know that we must learn it or we cannot live in the world. Now sleep, for you have been almost too long at the Farm."
She felt the Dame's strong hands upon her head, she heard the voices of the maids and the men, crying, "Sing us a song, dear Dame! Will you not sing us a song?"
Then the Dame began an old, sad ballad of a knight that loved a lady and went for her sake to fight the Pagans; but the moon rose cold over her marble tomb when he came back, and her falcon wailed beneath his hood. There was much more of this quaint sorrow and though she never could remember it she thought of it always when she walked in orchards.
Then she felt that she was being lifted, and in her dream she heard the Dame's deep voice:
"Push her through the wicket—hurry, Joan, she must be off the Farm soon or it will be too late, poor child! Is Karen saddled? Push her!—make haste, make haste! I hear the river—make haste, there! Push!"
"I will not leave the Farm! I will not!" she muttered and struggled to wake and fight with Joan. The red sun cut her opening eyes like a knife, she fought the arms that held her arms and struggled awake, staring into Joan's brown eyes.
But was it Joan? Joan wore no white cap, no tight black dress. The red glow in her eyes, was it the sun or a crimson cushion beneath her head? Whose stern, bearded lips unbent and smiled at her?
"Push, keep pushing!" he said, and raised and lowered her arms.
"Smell this, dear friend," and a strong, smarting odour filled her nostrils, so that she coughed and choked.
"That is better," said someone; "we were frightened. Why did you not tell us your heart was weaker than usual?"
The office nurse fanned her; a strong light was in her face.
"The doctor felt terribly about you—that cordial was not so very strong, he thought. You are all right, now?"
"It was Lotte that kept the cordial-room," she said vaguely, but with speaking her mind cleared and she came to herself again.
"Was I—was it for long?" she asked.
"It was longer than we liked," said the nurse; "of course, you had no idea of what was happening to you. We tried everything."
"I know that a great deal happened," she said; "let me see the doctor before I go."
I saw much of my friend as the years hurried by us; years in which I seemed to myself to lag shamefully, sometimes, and win nothing new out of life, but from which she drew fresh vigour of spirit with every season.
Many things she taught me, and of them all I best remember the one she told me last, when I had known her twenty years. She was at that time fully sixty, with a fine crown of silver hair, a tall, full figure and piercing dark eyes, for as she grew older her whole regard grew, as it seemed to me, keener and more commanding, and not, as with some women, softer and less powerful.
I had been with her all the white winter evening, on one of those errands of discerning charity that occupied so many of her hours and thoughts—dangerously many, as we who loved her would often say, considering that she spent herself unnecessarily upon much for which others might well have acted deputy. The sun had set early, for it was midwinter, and white points of winter stars were pricking through the frozen sky. The snow, iced over with a glistening crust, sent back pale reflections to the bars of cold green and thin rosy glows that stood for sunset, and a threatening wind began to rise, that shook down little icicles from the window ledge and made the stiff, chill branches of the oaks and beeches creak warningly.
I shivered to myself with pleasure and thanked sincerely the slender girl that brought hot tea to me and unwrapped my long furs. It was not my friend's daughter—the youngest of these was now happily married, and she would have been alone, were it not for the girls that she kept with her, training and guiding them into some of the wisdom and charm that distinguished her gracious self—a sort of unchartered school, where less gifted mothers sought eagerly to install their daughters.
As she accepted the services of two of these, and dispatched by a messenger some comforts to be sent to the suffering creature we had just returned from visiting, I lingered by the window and saw the first shadowy flakes of a new storm. The wind rose quickly to a howl, an icy branch tapped at the pane; we had narrowly escaped a dangerous home-coming. I could not resist a somewhat pettish complaint.
"Don't you think," I began, "that you have earned a rest from these expeditions, these insistent girls of yours, this constant responsibility? You are magnificently strong and well—yes; but even your vitality has its limits and too many people hang upon you, my dear! Do you shake us all off for a while and do something for yourself, your own pleasure and relaxation. Surely at your age you deserve rest! Your own have ceased to need you—why invite others?"
She looked strangely at me and in the dusk I saw her face white.
"There!" I went on, "you have harrowed yourself unnecessarily with that poor creature's pain and want—surely you could have sent money? There are people whose sole business it is to attend to such cases, and their nerves are coarser than yours—they are not so wrung by what is daily work to them."
At that moment a great fall of snow slid from one of the sloping roofs, so that the air was white before us. It swept to the ground with a dense, rushing crash and heaped itself into fantastic towers and walls; close by a red lantern shone out; the wind moaned sadly.
"Look! look!" she cried, one hand at her side, "the Dunes again! Surely you see that Castle, too? Or is it the sign—Oh, I am ready! Believe me, I am ready!"
I caught her hand.
"Those are no dunes, my dear friend, only black shadows on the snow of your own lands," I assured her, "and it is one of your own men with a lantern going on your own errand. It is the fallen snow that takes those strange spire-like shapes—no castle. This wind wails too much for your nerves. Look in, at the fire and the warm hall."
"No, no," she said quietly, "I love to look out—I am not afraid. I never know when I may see the Castle. And what you said about my rest.... Well, it seems to open my lips. It was on just such a night ... how cold the stars were! And I had nearly lost myself—hunting for my rest! When the moon rises I will tell you."
And then I knew that I was to hear one of those strange experiences of hers. As always, she spoke quickly, often halting for long between swift gushes of narrative, now as one who reads from an old book about a stranger, now like the adventurer himself. She did not always or steadily employ the style into which I have thrown her words, but she wrapped me in an atmosphere, and from that and the remembrance of a rising winter moon and a still, cold night, I write.
Her old friend the great physician, who now, in the evening of his busy life, attended only upon those whose necessities baffled the less experienced, pursed his lips and stared at her out of a grizzle of white hair.
"And what will you do," he asked abruptly, "when I have convinced them that you are unable to keep up these various relations that have been so many years a-building? Where will you go for this great rest?"
"Somewhere where I can be alone," she answered him, firmly, "where I can fold my hands by some quiet, lonely river, and think, where I can realize what I am; a widow, lonely for her best and life-long friend, a mother whose children need her no longer, a woman who has tasted life long enough and paid her debt to the world, and would slip out of it quietly. Surely that is little to ask?"
"I should say that the fact of your living showed you had not yet paid your debt to life," he said drily, "and I confess that I cannot see any great value in realizing these things you speak of. If they are so, they are so. Let them be."
"Oh, you are a man!" she cried bitterly.
"And I know, therefore, what a woman needs," he said, "and you, especially, who have many gifts denied, mostly, to your sex. Believe me, there is only one river for you—it is, literally, the River of Life."
"It is Lethe," she said obstinately, "and you shall not deny it to me. I tell you I am weary of my thoughts, and all the business of this River of yours. I have gained the bank; it is philosophy. Before I am driven far Inland—where even you cannot come and get me—and lose it altogether, I claim the right to begin the journey of my own accord. I want you to give me again that delicious, soothing treatment, that electric whirring, that takes away my thoughts—will you?"
He mused a while, seemed to have forgotten her.
"No, I will not," he said at length. And it was in vain that she urged him for he held to the refusal.
"Ours is no time of life to soothe away thought, dear friend," he said, "you need no treatment of mine."
While she begged him there came an urgent call from an inner office and he left the room quickly, asking her to wait. And as she sat there, baffled and a little resentful, the sight of the bright, mysterious machine so obedient there and always ready with its delicious oblivion, put a wild idea into her brain.
"We are old friends," she said to herself, "I know how he does it—why not? He will soon be here!"
And she pressed the well-known knob and watched the great discs begin to whir softly around under their glass dome. At the familiar sound her hunger for the coming comfort mounted fiercely, and she seized the long, supple, silk-wrapped cords and pressed the bulbs to either temple. A slight shock ran through her blood and with the realization of her folly came the knowledge that she could not take down her hands. The whirring grew, doubled, multiplied in volume; the room seemed to sway and rock; a low rumbling, like thunder, filled the air. Blind terror seized her, and shame for what she had done and could not undo, and as the office door flew open and a sharp, angry exclamation rose above the roaring, she summoned all her strength of will, tore away her hands, and fled, sick with fear, through a door covered by a velvet curtain. Through a small passage she stumbled, and then, as hurrying feet sounded behind her, and the roaring and whirring grew momently, she wove her way among a network of back stairs and halls and fell upon a small door under some steps, thinking it must lead to a cellar and stupidly remembering the safety of such spots in explosions and earthquakes—for now the whole house was quivering with the throbs of the terrible force she had set in motion. Down the narrow stair she plunged and hurried through the dim, earthy cellar, past bins of coal and great coiling pipes and drains. The jar seemed lessened here, but her humiliation and fright were no less.
"I can never meet his eyes again!" she murmured. "Will he ever forgive me? I must find a way out, down here."
But in the dim light and her utter ignorance of that part of the house, she could find no way out, though she went steadily away, during many minutes, from the stair she had descended. A great rat whisked across her foot and with a shriek of disgust she pressed the knob of a low door, forced it open, and found herself at the head of another flight of steps, of heavy stone. This would be a sub-cellar, she reasoned, and drew back, but the clattering feet of the rat behind her scared away all judgment and she plunged downward; the door closed heavily behind her.
These steps seemed interminable, twisted like a tower, and wearied the muscles of her legs terribly. At last they ended, and she found herself in a great arched vault like some ancient catacomb, empty, so far as she could see, but for cobwebs and dust. At least it was utterly silent; there was no more of that throbbing, and her eyes had by now accustomed themselves to the dimness. How broad this cellar might be she dared not adventure to find out, for a few paces from the wall the darkness swallowed everything.
"It must be that all the houses are connected at this depth," she thought, her mind still so confused from the shock she had sustained and all her hurry and fright, that she did not perceive the folly of her wandering farther, "for I have certainly gone far beyond the length of a city block, even. Perhaps I am in the heart of a great aqueduct system—it is all walled and ceiled with stone."
At last the dim glow faded and she was in the utter dark. But she dared not go back, for she had no clew to the stone stairs and had lost all her reckoning.
A piercing chill grew in the dead air; the silence was terrifying. But just as her brain cleared and fear began to creep into her blood, such fatigue had laid hold on her that the fear could not choke her—she was too far spent.
"To die like a rat in a drain!" she whimpered. "To stifle underground! Oh, I am too old for it! He might have let me die in my bed!"
Just then she saw ahead of her—she could not say if it were far or near—an arch, the outline of a low door, lighted through the cracks of it, and she drove her weary feet toward this and bent upon it, but uselessly, for it was thick stone. With her last remnant of strength she set her mouth to the crack and screamed, and it seemed to her that three loud knocks upon the other side answered her in some sort. She screamed again. Again came the three knocks and close against the crack a voice whispered.
"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I adjure you, wandering soul, be quiet!"
The voice was shaking with a fear as great as her own, and this gave her courage. She put her lips to the crack and cried:
"I am no wandering soul, but a poor woman! I am lost in this great vault—open, and let me out!"
"Do you swear this by the Holy Trinity, the Wounds of Christ and—and the Sorrows of Mary?"
"I swear it by anything you wish," she called, "if you will open the door and see how little you have to fear from me! But I shall soon be as dead as you think me, unless you make haste, for I am nearly frozen."
Now a rusty key grated, and after much tugging and panting from the other side, the door opened a little way and the scared head of a brown friar, such as one sees in the old countries, hooded and tonsured, peeped out.
"Mother of us all!" he cried fearfully, "and what—who art thou, then?"
"Only a woman, father," she said gently, for he was clearly ready to shut her back into the dark. "I am here by mistake. I only ask to be put on my way again, and I will not trouble your monastery."
For she had travelled much abroad and though she supposed herself to have entered through the cellar some church-school or cathedral establishment, of which there were not a few in her city, unconsciously she spoke of a monastery, as if she had met this holy brother in such a place.
"Monastery!" he repeated, but more assured now and opening the door wider, "why do you speak of that, my daughter? Who looks for a monastery on the Dunes?"
So simple and sincere he seemed that she could not doubt him and stared around her, to see herself in a rich, if small chapel, of rough stone, with coloured windows and a carved altar. The candles were but half alight; her cries had stopped this friar in his pious task, evidently. Holly was twined about among the carvings, and the effigy of a knight in full armour, his crossed feet upon a crouched hound, had candles on either side and the choicest berries and glossiest leaves upon his breastplate, but she did not stop to look at these but rushed to the only door she saw besides the one she had entered, the monk watching her curiously the while.
This door led to a narrow passage, that in turn to a broader, hung with rich tapestry, lighted with torches, set alternately with branching deer horns. This would never take her out, certainly, and she turned in confusion to the waiting friar.
"Is there no door to the street?" she said, impatiently.
"The street? The street," he repeated, "my daughter, what are you thinking of? Look through this pane and recollect your whereabouts."
He pointed to an empty pane among the coloured pieces of the window through which, now and then, the wind blew powdery snow. She put her eyes to it and looked out upon a great bare moorland, white under a cold winter moon. Here and there sprang a fir tree, but for the most part the land stretched away to the horizon, empty as death—and as chill. So close to her eye that she must hold her head back in order to see it, rose a great square tower with stretches of tiled roof, mostly snow-covered, spreading out below it; this chapel was the end of the building, it was plain.
Now a strange, uncertain doubt fell over her, and forgetting the terrors of the dark cellar and the long vaults, she turned to the little door again.
"Open that," she said, "and I will try my luck at getting back. For I have come farther than I knew, it seems."
The friar crossed himself. "Back!" he cried, "back through those ancient tombs, Christ knows where? Never dream of it, my daughter! Besides," as she rushed to the door, "it would be impossible. The old key broke in the lock even as I laboured over it, and ten men could not stir it now."
"Tombs?" she murmured, fearfully, "what do you mean by tombs? I came through a cellar...."
"My daughter in Christ," said the friar, advancing firmly toward her and holding out with shaking hands an ivory crucifix so that it touched her breast, "if thou art a mad-woman only, God pity thee, but if thou art more—and worse—then know this sign, before Whom all devils tremble, and vanish! For thou art covered inches deep with the dust of tombs so old that they are forgotten utterly of us who tend the ashes of their descendants, and the cobweb that drapes thy body like a shawl so that I cannot tell for my life the fashion of thy garments, or if thou art young or old, maid or widow, has been a-thickening these hundred years and more!"
At this the moon struck sharply through the empty pane and she saw herself for what he had said and swooned with the cold and her deadly fear.
She came to herself in a soft whispering and rustling of skirts, and knew that women were moving around her.
"What will happen to her?" said one voice, "I had not thought such things possible, hadst thou, Alys?"
"I know that old Ursula who was here in the old Countess's day told of something like it, and that the old Countess ordered a bath made ready, such, she said, as her grandmother had ordered. It seems they are always prepared."
"Be still, girls, she is stirring at the eyelids! How is it with you, madam?"
She opened her eyes and saw three or four young women in fanciful dresses looped up with chains, with jewelled nets upon their heads, and seed pearls braided into their hair. Their gowns of brocaded silk clung closely to the body and left the neck and shoulders bare.
"This is evidently no monastery," she said, and then, "where am I? I am so cold!"
"Soon you will be warm, madam," said the tallest of the girls, with two long braids of dark hair over her shoulders and a wine-red gown trimmed with black fur; "could you find it possible to walk between two of us, think you? Come, Mawdlyn, your arm!"
But little Mawdlyn shrank back. "I am in great fear of all that cobweb, cousin Alys," she whimpered, and no scowls availed to move her.
"Let me help you, Mistress Alys," said, very gravely, a young boy, stepping forward with a plumed cap in his hand and a short hunting knife at his leather girdle.
The tired woman leaned heavily on his arm, and it was he that led her gently and carefully along the great hall between the moving tapestries. Before a curtained door he paused.
"I can go no farther, madam, but if I may ever serve you, which is my true hope, call for me. You will see me on the instant," he said softly, and Alys led her behind the curtain.
Upon a daïs sat a very beautiful young woman with deep eyes like brown stars and two great braids of hair like the inner side of chestnuts when they fall apart. She was all in shot-gold silk and on her dark hair lay a twisted golden coronet with rubies studded in it. A big ruby hung on a golden chain around her warm white neck. Below her lay a great silver bath full to the brim of steaming water, and as the two entered, she rose, took a carved ivory box from an old serving woman beside her, and sprinkled a handful of what looked to be white sea sand from it into the bath, which bubbled and clouded and turned milky like an opal.
"Quickly, quickly, Alys!" she cried, "give her to me!"
And as the woman tottered and drew back from the steamy clouds, she of the coronet hastened toward her, took her in her young powerful arms as if she had been an infant, and lifted her over the silver edge. Now the warmth restored her a little and she resisted feebly and protested.
"But I am dressed—I am not ready for a bath—who are you that expect me here and masquerade so strangely? Let me see——"
For she perceived that she was being held so as to prevent her looking into the bath.
"Ah, madam, be guided, be guided! The Countess would not have you look!" cried Alys, but she turned in the strong arms that held her and peered into the milky waves, that smelt of roses, and her heart turned in her, for the bath had no bottom at all, and below the waves were the rocks of the sea itself, white and ribbed, stretching out endlessly! Great masts of ships were there and huge fishes oaring their way, and as the water touched her she did not feel it warm, but cold and salt. She struggled, but it reached her lips and she felt the Countess thrust her down, down.
"Push her, push her, Alys!" cried this cruel Countess, "press down her feet!" and she sank, gasping.
The water drew through her nostrils and the air was full of deep, tolling bells and at last a steady hum, as of bees. She knew nothing more.
At last, as one might waken after death, she breathed again, and felt herself being lifted from a warm, sweet bath and held, naked as a new child, on the knees of one who dried her softly with a towel of finest linen that smelt of roses.
"See how clean, my lady! Everything has gone!" She heard the voice of Alys, and peeped beneath her lids at where she had been plunged: it was but a great silver bath, clear, now, to the bottom, and quite empty.
"Where are my clothes?" she whispered, feeling strangely light and strong, "I am not cold any more; I can go on."
"Surely, if you will," said she whom they called the Countess, "but not till you have eaten and drunk and had of us new wear in the stead of that my bath has washed away."
And so, almost before she knew it, Alys and the old serving woman had put on her soft, fine linen and a shot-silver robe, looped up with a silver chain, and dressed her hair nobly. Over her neck and shoulders, no longer smoothly full like her own, this countess fastened a sort of cape of lace and silver, and on her feet the old woman fitted pointed velvet shoes. She watched them gravely, tingling still from that strange bath, trying to shape out in her mind what she would say to lead them to explain to her the place she had fallen upon, and why they played this pretty jest, and spoke and dressed so quaintly.
Now the Countess touched a silver bell and the old woman drew a heavy curtain before the bath and the daïs and placed a carved chair, and when Alys had led her to it, the same youth appeared with a tray in his hand, holding fine wheat bread and a graceful flagon of rosy wine and a fragment of honeycomb. He knelt before her, seriously, with eyes never raised above his silken knees, but his very presence moved her strangely and she put her hand softly on his head when he said, "Will you eat, madam, and refresh yourself?" and hastened to taste of all on his tray before he could be offended.
"And now, Alys, where is your mistress?" she said, when her strength was stayed and her eyes and voice bright again with the comforting wine, "for I must talk with her."
"Presently, madam, presently," said the girl, "none may speak with her at the moment, for she is gone to Mass—'tis the Count's name-day and the night, too, when God and St. Michael took him, fighting, and we have been out all day for holly for the chapel. We are all to go—will you come with us?"
"No," she said, thinking to make her way out when they were all gone and find out where this wild tract could be, "no, I will wait here. I am not of your religion, Alys."
The girl sprang back from her with frightened eyes and crossed herself.
"Madam!" she cried, "never speak so! If they thought a Moslem here—and to-night—hush, there go the men!"
There was a great tramping, and along the tapestries, before the drawn curtain, came a company of men-at-arms, clanking in full armour, with set, hard faces under the helmets.
She grasped at the arms of her oak chair wildly; these harsh men sent a chill through her—was some horrid treachery thus hinted to her? Then as Alys sped along behind them she felt her hand kissed softly and the little page-boy was there.
"There is none to hurt you—if you stay quiet here," he said softly, and she knew she dared not move or spy about.
Now arose a low chanting and then murmured prayers, and soon a smell of incense reached them. Then at last the mystic bell struck mellow on the night air and she knew that God was made and that men, maids, and Countess-widow were bowed before this mystery. The page bent low and crossed himself and a strange jealousy rushed over her that he should be of this sort, when she was not, for she loved the boy unreasonably.
"Your mother is a good Catholic, I see," she said, when the chant grew louder and covered her voice.
"I do not know, madam," he said.
"You do not know?" she cried, "and why not?"
"Because I do not know my mother, dear madam," he answered, and flushed to where his slim neck was hidden by his long hair.
Then a keen trouble rose in her and grew ever stronger, and the boy's eyes frightened her and yet she must watch him. Steadily she looked at him and sat as one in a dream and thought no more of going away, but when the Countess and her train came back and the men had vanished and the maids-in-waiting were whispering around the great fireplace, she put out her hand and caught the young widow's silken gown.
"Who—who is his mother?" she asked eagerly.
"Who should be?" the Countess answered strangely, "whom hath he a look of, guest of mine?"
The boy lifted his face as she put a shaking finger under his round chin and turned his eyes up to her, and a shiver ran through her—for they were her own eyes.
"This—this is no boy of mine!" she gasped, shaking with more than terror.
"He might have been," said the young Countess with grave gentleness, "but you would not have him. So that he must come to us."
"But that—all that was long ago," she whispered, thinking that she spoke aloud, her eyes lost in the boy's.
"Here they grow slowly, being nearly soulless when they come," said the Countess. "He would have been your oldest son, had he stayed with you."
"'Here!' In God's name, where am I?" she cried. "Am I dead, then, at last? But I had not thought—I had hoped for peace. I had counted on rest."
"Rest?" the Countess echoed her, "and why should you look for that, my guest? What, in all the worlds of God, rests? You are a strange people, beyond the Dunes.... But you are not dead. No dead come here."
She took her by the hand, the boy clinging to the other, and walked with her to the great fire. Here they sat down to tapestry work, green and blue and russet weavings, and the woman folded her hands in her lap and watched them moodily. At last she spoke.