190 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



December, 191 3; 



Stephen holds with John Woolman that 

 we must take care "not to diminish the 

 sweetness of life to any living creature." 



Chapter XXIII 



So went October and November, the 

 days unhurried and wonderful, but the 

 weeks rushed by (according to the calen- 

 dar) with a startling rapidity. The woods 

 v^re no longer golden, but brown; the 

 birds had gone, the summer resident 

 birds; the deer mice were busy making 

 over their nests into winter homes for 

 themselves; the squirrels were terribly 

 industrious, busy and chattering over their 

 nut getting. They had evidently played 

 all summer, and this was the serious busi- 

 ness of the year. 



I was ready for the winter, too. My 

 garden was snugly covered. Hollyhocks 

 and all the others were carefully blanketed 

 with the pine needles, with evergreen 

 boughs laid on top to keep them in place. 



There was scant excuse for staying 

 longer in the little house — it was unde- 

 niably cold in the mornings — but still 

 we lingered. Clarky was getting restless. 

 She had loafed all the "loaf" that was in 

 her and she wanted to get to work on a 

 real case. Besides, Richard Protheroe kept 

 writing to her volumes on rural sanitation 

 in its relation to the ministry, and up-to- 

 date orcharding; and he wanted, so she 

 said, to advise with her how best he could 

 make the old parsonage beside his flowery 

 orchard into a model of sanitary excel- 

 lence and modern improvement. "Tell 

 him to live in the orchard! " Stephen said, 

 "It's much pleasanter." I thought Clarky 

 rather disproportionately interested in that 

 parsonage. 



At last she began to pack. I went and 

 sat on the doorstep disconsolately. I had 

 on the same lumberman's leggings and 

 moccasins that Clarky had got for me at 

 first, for the cold was unmistakable and 

 already we had had little flurries of snow. 

 I heard Clarky pulling and hauling trunks 

 about and really enjoying the activity. 



I sat there in the November sunshine, 

 warm, if it was a bit reluctant, and looked 

 about. The hill stretched brown and 

 rather disconsolate, also; the grass was 

 dead; never a woodchuck sat at his house 

 door for every one of them had been a 

 month or more in his warm burrow, spend- 

 ing the winter season in the underworld 

 like a furry Proserpina. The big gray 

 squirrel was scolding and chattering in the 

 woodshed. He wanted us to go; I know 

 he intended to establish himself in the 

 attic the second we were out of the house. 

 Our redheaded woodpecker was tapping 

 busily; he had no intention of going away 

 and didn't care in the least whether we 

 stayed or went. 



Suddenly Stephen appeared. "You are 

 really going? " he asked. 



I nodded. "Clarky's packing, don't 

 you hear her?" I said, for within the 

 house a trunk lid fell with a bang. 



Stephen's face clouded, then it cleared 



suddenly. "But you aren't packing," he 

 said. "There's a wonderful little place 

 over in the pasture yonder," he pointed 

 south over the wide, grassed stretch, " that 

 has forgotten the time of year. Won't 

 you come? I want to show it to you." 



The sky cleared for me, also, as we went 

 over the brown grassed road, past the barns, 

 past the red gate and into the pasture that 

 was brown and bare as the leafless maple 

 trees, except for the scattering of seedling 

 pines,the ashen tops of dead goldenrod and 

 the stiff brown spear heads of the spirea. 

 Instead of going up the hill, he led the way 

 down to a little circular group of young 

 pines standing close together in a tiny 

 amphitheatre. Once within the enclosure 

 and November had vanished! The ground 

 was level; the red-brown of the pine 

 needles was threaded with ground pine 

 and soft with moss, and over it all and 

 through it all was the little herb Robert, 

 the tiny rose colored blossoms as gayly 

 erect as if there were no such thing as 

 frost. 



I sat down on the moss and took some of 

 the dear little flowers between my fingers, 

 but I didn't break them. They were 

 such courageous little things, they must 

 live as long as they could. Stephen stood 

 looking at the river in silence. Then he 

 came and sat beside me. The clouds were 

 over the mountain and turned its purple 

 into a dull violet. The winding river, 

 far below us looked dark and sullen. 



"Must you go?" he asked. 



"I'm afraid so," I answered. 



"The woods are wonderful here in the 

 winter," he said. The stillness of them 

 and the whiteness of them; and you go 

 through early in the morning after a snow- 

 fall before even the squirrels have dug out 

 their houses. And the color! Such reds 

 in the pine trunks and such vividness in 

 the hemlocks. They seem aloof in the 

 summer and half awake, but they are 

 wonderfully alive then. They talk to 

 you." 



"I wish I could see it," I said. 



"I suppose it calls you, the other life," 

 Stephen said slowly. 



"It doesn't call me. But there are 

 things I must do, now I'm well. And 

 there are people — — " 



"Once, last year, when I was over at 

 your place," he said irrelevantly, "a deer 

 had been killed by your apple-tree; there 

 was blood on the snow. And in March I 

 found eighteen or twenty little fox spar- 

 rows dead from cold and hunger in your 

 woods, they had come too early. Neither 

 of those things would have happened had 

 you been here! Are there people who so 

 greatly need you? " 



I thought of Aunt Cassandra, who held 

 a little oversight of me necessary as an 

 unwelcome chore, and of my brother Rod 

 vastly occupied with his engagement. 

 "There's no one in such urgent need," I 

 said, "but I ought to go." 



"You've been happy in this life?" he 

 said, hesitatingly. 



"Very. I never was really happy 

 before." 



He hesitated a moment. Then he turned 

 to me with a sudden directness, and the 

 shyness dropped, as it always did when he 

 spoke what he felt. "I have waited for 

 you all my life," he said, "why didn't 

 you come before." 



" I did not know ' ' I said. And then 



I looked at him and before the light in 

 his face my eyes fell, but I felt something 

 strange and wonderful wake in me — as 

 wonderful as it must be to the maples 

 when the frost lets go and the sap rushes 

 through every vein to waken it. And then 



But I shall not write what was said then. 

 That belongs to Stephen, and to me, and 

 to the darling little flowers that looked up 

 at us both — wondering and sympathetic. 

 But the pines stood aloof. They had 

 heard that story before; it was old to them 

 and the hill. Life and love, and birth and 

 death, the old mystery and the old sweet- 

 ness, and the very houses that had sheltered 

 them were gone but the hills and pines 

 still stood. 



It was dusk before we turned our faces 

 homeward. 



"This one winter I must go back," I 

 said, in answer to Stephen's question. 



"But in the spring, very early in the 

 spring ? " he urged. 



"In the spring," I said. 



"Before the scarlet maples and the blood 

 root?" he insisted. "You must see them 

 with me, and the spring must come for 

 us, too." 



"Before the scarlet maples and the 

 bloodroot," I assented. "We can be up 

 at the little house together." 



"I know now why I so loved your little 

 place," said Stephen, abruptly. 



It is now the middle of December. 

 Clarky and I have been three weeks back 

 from the little house. I've been sitting at 

 my window in the old room, where I used 

 to sit when I was ill, looking over the 

 journal I tried to keep of the summer's ad- 

 venture. Clarky is off on a beautiful sur- 

 gical case. Down in the yard next door 

 Uncle Hermann is covering his rose bushes 

 with straw. He has on the same short, 

 thick jacket that makes him look rounder 

 than ever, and the pockets are still bulging 

 with string and shears as in February when 

 he began pruning the vines and set me off 

 agardening. 



Ah, Uncle Hermann! Where should 

 I be now if you hadn't cared about your 

 roses and pruned them so assiduously? 

 Still as limp and useless as a seedling with 

 a cutworm at its root? I wonder. But 

 your roses are going to wake up in the 

 spring and I shall be very wide awake in 

 the spring. Stephen and I are going to 

 see it together, from the first flush until 

 the leaves are out. 



But it seems a bit long to wait for the 

 scarlet maples. 



(the end) 



