In the Border Country | Page 8

by my friend one afternoon in the ripe orchard and knew suddenly that we were going to speak of one of those strange experiences of hers that, for me, set her more effectually apart from others than any of her many and varied gifts and graces. As before, we fell into the matter suddenly, with no warning, and at a light question from me the like of which I must have asked her many times with no such answer as I then got.
All about us lay the windfalls, piled evenly, rich heaps of sunset colour. The better fruit gleamed through the boughs like fairy lamps and great ladders leaned against these on which the men climbed, picking carefully. Below them the maidservants, laughing and excited at this pleasant change of labour, handed the baskets and filled the gaping barrels. And up the ladders and through the trees and among the tinted heaps raced and played the children of the house, sniffing the heady flavour of the rich fruit, teasing the maids, cajoling the men, staggering under the heavy baskets, pelting each other, even, with the crimson and yellow globes, bringing each specially large and perfect one to their mother for congratulation. She, stopping for the moment her strange, jewelled embroidery, that alone would have marked her for an artist of high powers, would lean over each boy and girl, murmuring her praise, soothing in the same breath the unlucky ones who had not found the most gorgeous fruit, warning the men not to trouble the yet unready apples, quieting the maids if they grew too boisterous, an eye and an ear for everyone and everything.
As the lowering sun struck full on the nearest heap of red and gold, and turned the russet fruit on the bough to bronze nuggets wrapped in leaves of wonderfully wrought jade, a sudden thought tempted me and I spoke quickly, glancing slyly at her calm, contented face.
"Look at that colour!" I said, "does it not cry out to you to be painted? Does it not make you remember that spring orchard of yours that everyone praised so, and from which the great Master predicted your future? Would you not like to escape from all this pleasant, tiny bustle, this network of ceaseless demands upon your hands, your heart, your brain, and once again attack a real work?"
She looked curiously at me.
"A real work?" she repeated.
"I mean an enduring work," I explained, "a thing from which you can lift your hand some day and say, 'This is done. To the best of my power it is finished. Let it stand, and judge me by it.'"
She nodded her head slowly and I saw that she was not really looking at me, though she seemed to be, but beyond me, across the splendid orchard piles, into the stacked gold of the corn far afield.
"That's it," she murmured, "that's just what I told her--'an enduring work.' And what was it she said to me? Oh! I am going again--I am partly there now! Don't you see it? Is that the Lower Orchard? Are those the gray gables of the Farm?"
Her voice thrilled strangely and her eyes were staring, vague: it was as if she hung between sleep and waking. I looked where she pointed, but it was only an enormous ledge of gray rock, curiously slanted, and I said so, softly.
"It is only a rock, broken at the gable angle, dear."
Then she faced me, herself perfectly.
"Oh, you think so?" she answered me with a smile.
The words were strange enough in themselves, but without them her manner would have taught me that she was going to speak of stranger things yet, and I was not disappointed.
"It was just such a day as this," she began, "and the smell of the apples always takes me back, though never as strongly as now. We were in the orchard ... ah, my dear, you will tell it wonderfully well when I have told you, and many will learn as I have learned, but you can never make them see the Dame as I saw her!"
Then she told me the tale of that adventure.
* * * * *
"What you need," said her friend, the great physician, "is change. Change and rest. Where can you go and be sure of absolute quiet?"
"I cannot tell you," she said wearily, "there is always something that I must do----"
"----or think that you must do," he interrupted her.
"It is all the same," she said.
He sighed, and looked at her quietly for a long time.
"It has taken me fifty years to learn that, my dear child," said he, "and you toss it at me in a moment's talk. Since you have learned it, why are you not well and happy?"
"Since I have learned it, I can never be," she told