In the Border Country | Page 4

frightened, but when she glanced quickly at the spring from above, she thought she must have dreamed, for it was like any other spring, only a little deeper. Then she washed her hands till they tingled and warmed. When she had braided her hair afresh she turned and saw that the old woman had set out a meal for her on the low stool; a brown loaf, a comb of golden honey and an earthen jug of milk.
"Eat, my child," she said.
She fell upon the food and it was like wine and meat to her. The blood ran swiftly through her veins again and she forgot the terror and fatigue and the cloud in her mind.
"You are most kind to me, mother," she said, for she had lived in the old countries where it is easy to speak kindly to the old; "how do you happen to live here? I should have died but for you. All my courage had gone and it seemed that some terrible thing must be true, but I dared not think what it might be. Now I am strong again and I will thank you and go on."
"Where will you go, my child?" said the old woman.
She looked out of the door and saw that the wood was so dense that only a dim light pierced through the boughs far above her head.
"It is always twilight here," said the old woman.
"But you can tell me the way, surely you know the way out?" she begged.
"I know my way," said the old woman, "but not your way. I come from the other side."
"And how do you come?" she asked, almost fearfully, for something about the old woman began to frighten her.
"I follow my bees," said the old woman.
"But I cannot wait for your bees," she cried, vexed and alarmed. "I must get back--I was mad to have come here. I have work to do. Everything has gone wrong with me since--since--oh, I must go back and get at my work!"
"And what is your work?" the old woman asked.
"I am an artist," she said.
"What is that?"
"I paint pictures," she said.
"Why do you do that?" asked the old woman.
"Why? Why?" she repeated. "Why does anyone do his work? Because I am told by good workmen that I do it well, and that I shall every year do it better. Because I would give up food and sleep for it. Because I shall, if I live, some day do some one thing that will be remembered after I am past all work."
"You will never do that with a picture," said the old woman quietly.
She stamped her foot upon the earthen floor.
"How dare you say so, you?" she cried. "What do you know of art or the great world of cities beyond this horrible wood? What are you?"
"They call me the Bee-woman, in this part of the wood," she answered, "but I have many duties. What are yours?"
"I have told you," she said sullenly, for under the other's eyes her own fell.
"Not so," said the Bee-woman quickly, a hand on her shoulder, "you have told me only your pleasures. I do not ask you for what you would sacrifice food and sleep--though you seem unable to go without either for very long--but for what you should sacrifice them?"
She clasped her hands and faced the Bee-woman proudly.
"Art is the one thing in this world that makes these two the same," said she, "to the artist his art is both his pleasure and his duty."
"That is the reason that artists are not women, then," replied the Bee-woman, "for their duties cannot be their pleasures very long or very often."
At this she would have run away, but her knees were still weak, and the thought of the trackless woods stopped her heart a moment with fear.
"A Bee-woman may know much of bees," she said coldly, "but the world beyond this wood has a wider space to overlook, and while you have been growing old in the wood, mother, the humming of your charges has stopped your ears to the voices of the young who fill the world outside. They would tell you, if you could understand, that Art is the one word that is one for men and women."
"My child," said the Bee-woman, "so long as bees hive and trees root in the earth there will be no such word. For the words of the world were made to match the things of the world, and that is so in this wood and out of it."
She looked at the Bee-woman and felt troubled and on the eve of something great and sad.
"You are no common peasant woman, I am sure," she said gently, "and indeed, I have heard wiser and more travelled persons than you say very much the thing that I think