Kitabı oku: «Master of the Vineyard», sayfa 15
"Suddenly an imperious voice called out: 'Each to his own work!' They hesitated for a moment, then obeyed, and presently everything was changed. From confusion and disorder it resolved itself into perfect harmony, for each one was doing his own work and doing it well.
"And, as they worked, the Spirit of Love came among them and the workers began to sing at their tasks. Each one did not only his own work but helped his neighbour with his. They became eager to do all they could instead of as little as they might and still escape censure, and the face of each one was shining with joy.
"When I awoke I was saying aloud: 'Each to his own work!' For some time I did not know it was only a dream, but gradually the meaning of it became clear. Edith, did you ever stop to think that the millennium could be brought about in less than one hour, if each did his own work well and in a spirit of love? It is we ourselves who are out of harmony, not things as they are, and, having once attained harmony, everything will become right.
Joy through Service
"And so, beloved, my love for you has been as a great light in my soul. I need no more than to give it without ceasing, and to renew, through human service, not only my love for you, but the love for all which leads to brotherhood.
"I have come to see that joy comes through what we give, not through what we take; happiness through serving, not through being served; and peace through labour, not rest.
"I thought, at first, that I loved you, but it seems to have grown a hundred-fold. No barriers may divide us from one another, nor earth with all its seas sunder us apart, for through love has come union, not only with you but the whole world.
"And so, good-night – heart of my heart, life of my life, and soul of my soul.
"A. M."
"Dear and Ever Dearer:
"Your letter lies against my heart where I feel it with every rising breath. I, too, have longed for you, a thousand times, and in a thousand ways.
"Always as the tide of the night turns, I wake and think of you. When through the darkness comes no response, I smile to myself, knowing you are asleep, then I sleep also. But sometimes, in an instant, the darkness becomes alive and throbs with eager messages, as love surges from my heart to yours and from yours to mine.
The Open Door
"I, too, have come into the way of service, of brotherhood. It may seem a strange thing to write, or even to say, but you, who have never failed to understand me, will understand this. I never cared so much for my husband as I do now; I was never less conscious of myself, never more eager to ask nothing and give all. And, through this change in me has come about a change in him. Instead of each of us selfishly demanding what we conceive to be our 'rights,' each strives unselfishly to please the other – to see who can give the most.
"You have taken nothing away that belongs to anyone else, dear – the love I bear you is yours alone, but, through it, I have some way more to give; he is the richer, because of you.
"Like you, I have seen before me a multitude of openings, all leading, through ways of self-sacrifice, to the sure finding of one's self. The more love you give, the more you have; it is, in a way, like the old legend of the man who found he could take to Heaven with him only those things which he had given away.
"All around me I see the pitiful mistakes that masquerade as marriage – women who have no virtues save one tied like millstones to some of earth's noblemen; great-hearted and great-souled women mated with clods. I see people insanely jealous of one another, suspicious, fault-finding, malicious; covertly sending barbed shafts to one another through the medium of general conversation. As if love were ever to be held captive, or be won by cords and chains! As if the freest thing on earth would for a moment enter into bondage, or minister unto selfishness when it is, of itself, unselfishness! Passion-slaved and self-bound, they never see beyond their own horizon, nor guess that the great truths of life and love lie just beyond their reach.
A Plea for Rosemary
"Looking back, I can see one thing that you may have missed. This love of ours has brought joy to you and to me, and, indirectly, happiness to my husband. It has not affected your mother, one way or another, but it has hurt Rosemary – taken away from her the one thing that made her sordid life worth while.
"Dear, can't you see your way clear to make it right with her – to give back at least as much as she had before I came into your life? You will take nothing from me by doing so, for my place with you is secure and beyond the reach of change, as you know yours is with me.
"But, just because the full moon has risen upon midnight, shall we refuse to look at the stars? Believe me, all the lesser loves have their rightful place, which should be more definitely assured because of the greater light.
Rosemary's Need
"I am pleading not only for her, but for you. Tell her everything, if you choose, or if you feel that you must in order to be honest. I am sure you can make her understand.
"The door of the House of Life is open for you and for me, but it is closed against her. It is in your power at least to set it ajar for her; to admit her, too, into full fellowship through striving and through love.
"She will help you with your vineyard people, and, perhaps, come to peace that way. Her unhappy face as I saw it last haunts me – I cannot help feeling that I am in some way responsible. She needs you and what you can give her, more, perhaps, than I, who shall never have it again.
"Never! The word, as I write it, tolls through my consciousness like a funeral knell. Never to see your face again, or to touch your hand, or to hear you say you love me. Never to feel your arms holding me close, your heart beating against mine, never to thrill with ecstasy in every fibre of me in answer to your kiss.
"Only the silence, broken, perhaps, by an occasional letter, and the call in the night, bridging the darkness and distance between us, to be answered for one little hour by love, surging from one to the other and back again.
Caught in a Web
"And yet these thoughts of ours are as a weaver's shuttle, plying endlessly through the web of night and space and time. One thought may make a slender thread, indeed, but what of the countless thoughts that fly back and forth, weaving and interweaving as they go? Shall they not make first a thread, and then a cord, then a web, and then a fabric, until, at last, there is no separation, but that of the body, which counts for naught?
"Dear Heart, you mean so much to me, are so much. From you and from your love for me I take fresh courage every day. From your strength I make sure of my own strength, from your tenderness I gather compassion, and from your steadfastness I gain the hope that leads me onward, the belief that enables me to face each day bravely and with a smile.
"Deep in my heart, I hold fast to one great joy. Sometimes I close the door quickly upon it and bar up the passage, lest anyone should guess that there, within a bare white chamber, is erected the high altar of my soul, where the lights shine far into the shadows, in spite of rock-hewn portals, closed and barred.
"The knowledge of your love I have with me always, to steady me, to guide me, to uplift me, to make even a grave warm and sweet. And to you, with my own hands, I have brought the divine fire that shall not fail, so what more need we ask of God, save that somewhere, sometime, in His infinite compassion, we may be together, even though it may be in the House not Made with Hands?
Edith to Alden
"Remember that I long for you, dream of you, hope for you, believe in you, pray for you, and, above all else, love you, love you – love you. And in all the ways of Heaven and for always, I am thine.
"E."
XXIII
Betrothal
On the Hills by the Vineyard
Desolation lay upon the vineyard. The fairy lace had been rudely torn aside by invading storms and the Secret Spinners had entered upon their long sleep. The dead leaves rustled back and forth, shivering with the cold, when the winds came down upon the river from the hill. Caught, now and then, upon some whirling gust, the leaves were blown to the surface of the river itself, and, like scuttled craft, swept hastily to ports unknown.
Rosemary escaped from the house early in the afternoon. Unable to go to the Hill of the Muses, or up the river-road, she had taken a long, roundabout path around the outskirts of the village and so reached the hills back of the vineyard. The air of the valley seemed to suffocate her; she longed to climb to the silent places, where the four winds of heaven kept tryst.
She was alone, as always. She sighed as she remembered how lonely she had been all her life. Except Alden, there had never been anyone to whom she could talk freely. Even at school, the other children had, by common consent, avoided the solitary, silent child who sat apart, always, in brown gingham or brown alpaca, and taking refuge in the fierce pride that often shields an abnormal sensitiveness.
In Real Life
She sat down upon the cold, damp earth and leaned against a tree, wondering if it would not be possible for her to take cold and die. In the books, people died when they wanted to, or, what was more to the point, when other people wanted them to. It was wonderful, when you came to think of it, how Death invariably aided Art.
But, in real life, things were pitifully different. People who ought not to die did so, and those who could well be spared clung to mortal existence as though they had drunk deeply of the fabled fountain of immortal youth.
Descending to personalities, Rosemary reflected upon the ironical Fate that had taken her father and mother away from her, and spared Grandmother and Aunt Matilda. Or, if she could have gone with her father and mother, it would have been all right – Rosemary had no deep longing for life considered simply as existence. Bitterness and the passion of revolt swayed her for the moment, though she knew that the mood would pass, as it always did, when she took her soul into the sanctuary of the hills.
A Mystery
Dispassionately she observed her feet, stretched out in front of her, and compared them with Mrs. Lee's. Rosemary's shoes were heavy and coarse, they had low, broad heels and had been patched and mended until the village cobbler had proclaimed himself at the end of his resources. Once or twice she had said, half-fearfully, that she needed new shoes, but Grandmother had not seemed to hear.
Father had meant for her to have everything she wanted – he had said so, in the letter which at that moment lay against Rosemary's bitter young heart. He would have given her a pair of slippers like those Mrs. Lee had worn the day she went there to tea – black satin, with high heels and thin soles, cunningly embroidered with tiny steel beads. How small and soft the foot had seemed above the slipper; how subtly the flesh had gleamed through the fine black silk stocking!
She wondered whether father knew. No, probably not, for if he did, he would find some way to come and have it out with Grandmother – she was sure of that. God knew, of course – God knew everything, but why had He allowed Grandmother to do it? It was an inscrutable mystery to her that a Being with infinite power should allow things to go wrong.
For the moment Rosemary's faith wavered, then re-asserted itself. It was she who did not understand: the ways of the Everlasting were not her ways, and, moreover, they were beyond her finite comprehension. If she waited, and trusted, and meanwhile did the best she could, everything would be right somewhere, sometime. That must be what Heaven was, a place where things were always right for everybody.
Startled
Gradually her resentment passed away. The impassioned yearning for life, in all its fulness, that once had shaken her to the depths of her soul, had ceased to trouble or to beckon. It had become merely a question of getting through with this as creditably and easily as she might, and passing on to the next, whatever that might prove to be.
The ground upon which she sat was cold and damp. Rosemary shivered a little and was glad. Release might come in that way, though she doubted it. She was too hopelessly healthy ever to take cold, and in all her five and twenty years had never had a day's illness.
A step beside her startled her and a kindly voice said: "Why, Rosemary! You'll take cold!"
Crimson with embarrassment she sprang to her feet, shaking the soil from her skirts. "I – I didn't hear you coming," she stammered. "I must go."
New Plans
"Please don't," Alden responded. "Remember how long it is since I've seen you. How did you happen to come up here?"
"Because – oh, I don't know! I've come sometimes to see the vineyard. I've – I've liked to watch the people at work," she concluded, lamely. "I see so few people, you know."
Alden's face softened with vague tenderness. "Was it just this last Summer you've been coming, or has it been all along?"
"I've always come – ever since I was big enough to climb the hill. I – I used to steal grapes sometimes," she confessed, "before I knew it was wrong."
"You can have all the grapes you want," he laughed. "I'll send you a basket every day, if you want them, as long as the season lasts. Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I – I never thought," she answered. She might have added that she was not accustomed to the idea of any sort of gift, but she did not put the thought into words.
"Come over here, Rosemary. I want to show you something – tell you about some new plans of mine."
He led her to the group of workers' houses back of the pines. A great deal of repairing had been done and every house was habitable, if not actually comfortable. They had all been furnished with quiet good taste, and had been freshly whitewashed, both inside and out. There was a great pile of cots and a stack of new blankets.
The Hospital
"What is it?" asked Rosemary, much interested.
"The Marsh Tuberculosis Hospital," he answered. His face was beaming.
"I – I don't understand."
"Don't you? Well, it's simple enough. If I hadn't been all kinds of an idiot and blindly selfish I'd have thought of it before. One of the men who came to pick grapes this year has a wife at home with tuberculosis. All she needs is to lie on a cot outdoors and have plenty of fresh eggs and milk. He's coming to-morrow, with her, and his two children. The girl will learn housekeeping from mother daytimes and the boy will go to school. I have room for several others if I can find them, and I have people in town hunting them up for me. See?"
"Oh!" said Rosemary. "How beautiful! How good you are!"
"Not good," said Alden, shamefacedly, digging at the soil with his heel. "Merely decent – that's all." He took a spring cot out of the pile, spread a blanket upon it, and invited Rosemary to sit down.
"It is beautiful," she insisted, "no matter what you say. How lovely it must be to be able to do things for people – to give them what they need! Oh," she breathed, "if I could only help!"
The Gift and the Giver
Alden looked at her keenly. "You can, Rosemary."
"How?"
"I don't know, but there's always a way, if one wants to help."
"I have nothing to give," she murmured. "I haven't anything of my own but my mother's watch, and that won't go, so it wouldn't be of any use to anybody."
"Someone said once," he continued, "that 'the gift without the giver is bare.' That means that what you give doesn't count unless you also give yourself."
"To give yourself,'" she repeated; then, all at once, her face illumined. "I see now!" she cried. "I can give myself! They'll need someone to take care of them, and I can do that. I can cook and scrub floors and keep everything clean, and – but Grandmother won't let me," she concluded, sadly.
A paragraph from Edith's letter flashed vividly into his memory: "The door of the House of Life is open for you and for me, but it is closed against her. It is in your power at least to set it ajar for her; to admit her, too, into full fellowship, through striving and through love."
His heart yearned toward her unspeakably. They belonged to one another in ways that Edith had no part in and never could have. Suddenly, without looking at her, he said: "Rosemary, will you marry me?"
What For?
She turned to him, startled, then averted her face. Every vestige of colour was gone, even from her lips. "Don't!" she said, brokenly. "Don't make fun of me. I must go."
She rose to her feet, trembling, but he caught her hand and held her back. "Look at me, dear. I'm not making fun of you. I mean it – every word."
She sat down beside him, then, well out of reach of his outstretched hand. "What for?" she asked, curiously.
"Because I want you."
"I – I don't understand."
"Don't you love me?"
"You have no right to ask me that." Her tone was harsh and tremulous with suppressed emotion.
"No," he agreed, after a pause, "I suppose I haven't." She did not answer, so, after a little, he rose and stood before her, forcing her eyes to meet his.
"Do you – know?" he asked.
Rosemary hesitated for a moment. "Yes, I – know," she said, in a different tone.
"And that was why you – "
"Yes." Her voice was scarcely audible now.
"It wasn't true, then, that you didn't love me?"
Alden Confesses
She turned upon him fiercely. "What right have you to ask me all these questions?" she cried, passionately. "What have you to offer me? How can you take all I have to give and give me nothing in return? What is your love worth? What do you think I am? The plaything of an idle hour, something to be taken up or cast aside whenever you may choose, to be treated kindly or brutally as your fancy may dictate, to be insulted by your pity – by what you call your love? No, a thousand times no!"
His face was very white and his mouth twitched, but in a moment he had gained, in a measure, his self-control. "I don't blame you in the least, Rosemary. I deserve it all, I know. But, before you condemn me utterly, will you listen to me for a few moments?"
She assented, by the merest inclination of her head.
"I want to be honest with you," he went on, clearing his throat, "and I want to be honest with myself. No doubt you think I'm all kinds of a cad, and rightly so, but, at least, I've been honest – that is, I've tried to be.
"When I asked you to marry me, early in the Spring, I meant it, just as I mean it now, and I was glad when you said you would. Then – she came.
"I had nothing whatever to do with her coming, in fact, I protested against it, as mother will tell you if you ask her. I didn't know her, and I didn't want her, but after I knew her – "
Alden Was Glad
"You did want her," said Rosemary, coldly.
"Yes, I wanted her, and she was married to another man. She had sufficient grounds for a divorce, though she never told me what they were, and I pleaded with her to take advantage of the opportunity. I tried by every means in my power to persuade her, and when you – released me – "
"You were glad," she said, finishing the sentence for him.
"Yes," he replied, in a low tone, "I was glad. She decided, finally, to leave it to him. If he wanted her back, she would go; if he preferred his freedom, she would give it to him. And, of course, he wanted her, and he had the right."
"So she went."
"So she went, and it was all over, and we shall never see each other again."
"It's too bad," said Rosemary, icily. "I'm sorry for you both."
"Listen dear," he pleaded. His face was working piteously now. "I wish I could make you understand. I loved her, and I love her still. I shall love her as long as I live, and perhaps even after I'm dead. And she loves me. But, because of it, in some strange way that I don't comprehend myself, I seem to have more love to give others.
He States His Case
"I care more for my mother because I love – Edith, and, queer as you may think it, I care more for you. She has taken nothing away from you that I ever gave you – you are dearer to me to-day than when I first asked you to marry me, so long ago. I don't suppose you'll believe it, but it's the truth."
"I believe what you tell me," Rosemary said, in a different tone, "but I don't understand it."
"It's like this, Rosemary. My loving her has been like opening the door into the House of Life. It's made everything different for me. It's made me want to make the best of myself, to do things for people, to be kind to everybody. It isn't selfishness – it's unselfishness.
"I told you once that I wanted to take you away from all that misery, and to make you happy. It was true then, and it's true now, but, at that time, I was bound in shallows and didn't know it. She came into my life like an overwhelming flood, and swept me out to sea. Now I'm back in the current again, but I shall know the shallows no more – thank God!
"If you'll believe me, I have more to give than I had then – and I want you more. I'm very lonely, Rosemary, and shall be always, unless – but, no, I don't want your pity; I want your love."
A Philanthropic Scheme
There was a long pause, then Rosemary spoke. "Service," she said, half to herself, "and sacrifice. Giving, not receiving. Asking, not answer."
"Yes," returned Alden, with a sigh, "it's all of that.
"Leaving love aside," he went on, after a little, "I believe you'd be happier here, with mother and me, than you are where you are now. You'd be set free from all that drudgery, you could help me in my work, and, though I'm not rich, I could give you a few of the pretty things you've always wanted. We could go to town occasionally and see things. Moreover, I could take care of you, and you've never been taken care of. I don't think you'd ever be sorry, Rosemary, even though you don't love me."
"I never said I didn't love you," the girl faltered. Her eyes were downcast and the colour was burning upon her pale face.
"Yes, you did – up on the hill. Don't you remember?"
"I – I wasn't telling the truth," she confessed. "I've – I've always – "
"Rosemary!"
She looked at him with brimming eyes. "What you've done, or what you may do, doesn't make any difference. It never could. If – if it depends at all on – on the other person, I don't think – it's love."
Her Very Own
In an instant his arms were around her, and she was crying happily upon his shoulder. "Dear, my dear! And you cared all the time?"
"All the time," she sobbed.
"What a brute I was! How I must have hurt you!"
"You couldn't help it. You didn't mean to hurt me."
"No, of course not, but, none the less I did it. I'll spend the rest of my life trying to make up for it, dear, if you'll let me."
It flashed upon Rosemary that this was not at all like the impassioned love-making to which she had been an unwilling witness, but, none the less, it was sweet, and it was her very own. He wanted her, and merely to be wanted, anywhere, gives a certain amount of satisfaction.
"Kiss me, dear," Rosemary put up her trembling lips, answering to him with every fibre of body and soul.
"Don't cry, dear girl, please don't! I want to make you happy."
Rosemary released herself, wiped her eyes upon a coarse handkerchief, then asked the inevitable question:
"Will she care?"
"No, she'll be glad. Mother will too."
A Promise
"Grandmother won't," she laughed, hysterically, "nor Aunt Matilda."
"Never mind them. You've considered them all your life, now it's your turn."
"It doesn't seem that I deserve it," whispered Rosemary, with touching humility. "I've never been happy, except for a little while this Spring, and now – ."
"And now," he said, taking her into his arms again, "you're going to be happy all the rest of your life, if I can make you so. If I don't you'll tell me, won't you?"
"I can't promise," she murmured, shyly, to his coat sleeve. "I must go now, it's getting late."
"Not until you've told me when you'll marry me. To-morrow?"
"Oh, no!" cried Rosemary. "Not to-morrow."
"Why not?"
"It's – it's too soon."
"In a week, then?"
"I – I don't know. I'll see."
"Make it very soon, my dear, will you?"
"Yes – just as soon as I can."
"Is that a promise?"
"Yes – a promise."
"Then kiss me."
Half Afraid
The white fire burned in Rosemary's blood; her heart beat hard with rapturous pain. Upon the desert wastes that stretched endlessly before her, Spring had come with the old, immortal beauty, and more than mortal joy. Half afraid of her own ecstasy, she broke away from him and ran home.
