The Best Short Stories of 1915 Part 28

"Now I will eat a snack here," Andy said to himself, "and afterward, may G.o.d have mercy on my soul, I will lie down and nap under the pine and try to sleep off whatever it is that is bothering me."

And he did so, lying down beneath the pine--

He closed one eye gently and slowly (like letting a lid down on a box of playthings) and then he closed the other eye the same way; and then he knew nothing at all until suddenly a Voice came clap out of the blue sky, calling his name, "Andy Gordon, man! Andy Gordon!" over the hills and far.

Andy was amazed, of course, and said: "Here I am," with all his might, but without making a bit of sound (just as we all do in dreams).

"The thing the matter with you," went on the great Voice, without any introduction or anything of the sort but coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, "is that you need Work. You are tired to death with work; work-with-a-little-'w' is killing the soul out of you, Andy; work-with-a-little-'w' always does that to men, if you give it the whole chance. But that can't be helped. You're bound to have a whole lot of it in your life But--_if_ you don't mix some Big-'W' Work in with it, then indeed and indeed your life will be disastrous and your days will be dead."

Andy did not know but what he was a-dreaming, though his eyes were now wide open and he could see a robin hopping on the sod. "What is it you mean by Big-'W' Work?" he asked.

"Of course, that's the Work you love for the Work's sake. It's Work you do because you love the thing itself you're working for."

"You make that hard to understand," said Andy.

"Well, and it will be hard for people to understand _you_ when you're at that sort of Work. They know well enough what you're about as long as you turn 'em out yards of flannel down at Glas...o...b..ry, don't they?"

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Andy.

"And it would be the same way if you were a smith and turned 'em out horse shoes, or a bill clerk and turned 'em out bills. They'd understand _that_."

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Andy.

"But the trouble with that work-with-a-little-'w' is that you do it only for the pay there is in it--never for the love of it--that's why it seems to you a shame to waste your whole life at it, you know."

"Indeed it does, and that's why I'm here away from it all," said Andy.

"All very well for a while," said the Voice. "But you'll have to keep on at it somewhat--say, half your life at work-with-a-little-'w,' sitting at your machine down yonder at the mill, turning 'em out the stuff they know to be useful."

At that Andy fell silent and was sad again. Where would he find a beginning at the Big-"W" Work? he asked himself.

But the Voice seemed to know what was in his mind, and answered him: "I can give you that sort of Work. But it will take the best there is in you to do that sort of Work; and the Work will surely die as soon as you've accomplished it. And there will be no money in it for you, at all, and a great deal of pain, care and weariness. But you will find great love in your Work, and for your Work; and though it all vanishes at once you will experience so wonderful a joy that it will seem as if, night and day, G.o.d is whispering the secrets of life in your ear."

"What is the Work like?" asked Andy.

"Would you be willing to try it? Remember, it is difficult and wearying and is dead as soon as it is born."

"Yes, by glory, I would," shouted Andy.

"_Then dress this maid until you die!_" commanded the Voice.

At the words, my friend, there was music of a million armies of all sorts of birds, whistling and whirring over the green earth; and the echoes of their tremendous singing shook all the trillions of tiny new leaves and made the waves of air to dance--how shall I say?--like the waves of a sea of music running out forever.

And there, on the gra.s.s, sure enough, was a little naked baby girl just able to stand.

Very quiet, she was, and she looked up at Andy with eyes of a fairy blue--as if they'd been colored by that very same fairy that goes about with a brush coloring all the violets we ever see. (The ones we never see, you know, are never colored.)

"We-e-ell!" cried Andy, puckering up his lips and squinting up his eye-lids. "And who are you?"

"I'm early Summer," she lisped. "And I'm in a dreadful hurry. I'd like some lemon-colored silk--for a mantle, you know?--And some apple-green ta.s.sels for my hair. And please do be quick about it. I'm due, you see.

So I'll be ever so much obliged if you'll only hurry."

Andy whistled ruefully. "Now, _that_ would take some weaving, miss." He hesitated. "I don't think I'm that skillful."

The little G.o.ddess looked hurriedly away over her shoulder as if she were about to depart.

"And then," Andy continued, "I have no loom up here; and no warp; and no filling. Nothing at all to work with, you see. I--"

But while he was stumbling about with his excuses, he saw the little one actually fading away before his eyes; and a pain most bitter caught at his heart, as if he were losing all his life. So he cried out:

"But I'll _try_ miss. Give me a little time, miss. Oh, please, my wee bairn. I have an old handloom of my grandfather's; and I can go and hurry and fetch all the stuff up here somehow and I'll work as fast as I can. Indeed, I'll try my best."

Whereat, you see, the babe came back to him, smiling as sweetly as early Summer ever smiled. "There really isn't such an awful hurry," she said.

"We can always have Weather, you know, and hold these things back a bit."

That was the beginning of it.

Andy was about twenty-eight years old then, and he really had an awful time of it at first trying to work out by hand the wonderful stuffs and colors. There was the fern-design, spangled with Sweet William, for instance. It was only to be the edging on a shawl for her, but he spent three days and two nights on it; and then she asked him to make it over with jack-in-the-pulpit inset, because she was sure to grow tired very soon of Sweet William; then she changed her mind about jack-in-the-pulpit and decided on wintergreen berries. This is just a sample of one teeny bit of what she demanded. And Andy was very awkward; so naturally he began complaining of his shuttles being too clumsy for such fine work and the cobwebby filling getting tangled up in his thumbs and after a bit of chewing his nails in despair he swore the thing never could be done by hand.

No sooner had he got that out, than he heard the Voice roar loud like an emperor's voice and say:

"The Big-'W' Work you love to do _must_ be done by hand. It _can't_ be done any other way. That is why you were given thumbs, when the other beasts got none."

So Andy found it was no use quarreling with the tools. He looked at his hands, holding them up before him, and he thought: "Well, the Voice is right. My hands wouldn't be any good without my thumbs. I have hands and thumbs both and surely they were given me for the reason the Voice mentions. At any rate, I know no better."

That made Andy set to work all the harder, for the idea of Thumb-and-Craft was new to him; and that made his craft very interesting to him, so that he became determined to stick to it until he got the beauty out of it. (All the same, it was a frightfully backward Summer that year; and n.o.body--except Andy--thought very well of her.)

He found indeed that he would have to work as fast as his fingers could go. For the little Summer grew big and bigger in an amazingly short time; and she kept throwing things away as fast as she put them on just as the Voice had foretold.

Her days, though, went happily along, all full of sweet smells out of cups and umbels of flowers and from the liquor of the leaves as they steeped in the hot sun; and Andy himself felt quite happy (when he wasn't terribly interested in his Work, and then he paid attention to nothing at all save what was between his thumb and forefinger). But while he worked and the Summer danced or dozed and grew before him, he noticed something he had never noticed until then--As the Summer grew older, she kept asking him for darker blues. While she was little she had liked light greens, but week by week as time went on she insisted more and more that he put in plenty of blue.

"Bluer and bluer," muttered Andy, and a wee shot of pain hit his heart.

"Yes, it's bluer and bluer, all right, I know. And finally some day 'twill all be steel-blue everywhere--in the snow-drifts and in the skies--and neither the la.s.s nor I will be here then."

Well may you believe that the departing of that first Summer was a sad matter to him. He had done his best, you see, and a whole new world of trying had been thrown open to him. And really he was beginning to get the knack of that kind of weaving. And she was a fine big apple-cheeked woman now, and--

"Well, if I do say it myself," growled Andy, "she looks very handsome in those dresses; and for the first time in my life I take a Pride in my Work."

But in spite of all that the Voice came, you must know, and told him this little dream-girl must die, and there would be another, a different little girl next year; and all the weaving must be gone through with again.

"Shall I be weaving this la.s.s her shroud?" asked Andy of the Voice.

But the Voice did not answer him.

When Andy told all this to _her_, his first Summer cried for a whole week in amongst the trees and over the pastures and meadows--

And then one morning, she was no longer there.

Andy sat in the doorway of the cabin and stared across the hills. He saw pine trees, ever green, and he made up his mind she had not died but had gone into one of them so as to live forever. And then he fell to thinking how there were so many millions of pine trees, and he guessed to himself how each of the millions of Summers we have had must have gone into one of those trees so as never to die but to be always of the Green Folk, ever green. Well, he rocked back and forth keening soft to himself, when he happened to hear the Voice again and the Voice said: