A Mountain Woman Part 17

"He spoke like an Italian," said the physician to her warily.

"And so he was," she had replied.

"A fellow-countryman of yours, no doubt?"

"Are not all men our countrymen, my friend?" she said, gently. "What are little lines drawn in the imagination of men, dividing territory, that they should divide our sympathies? The world is my country--and yours, I hope. Is it not so?"

Then there had also been a hapless pair of lovers, shamed before their community, who, desperate, impoverished, and bewildered at the war between nature and society, had been helped by her into a new part of the world. There had been a widow with many children, who had found baskets of cooked food and bundles of well-made clothing on her step.

And as the days pa.s.sed, with these pleasant offices, the face of the strange woman glowed with an ever-increasing content, and her dark, delicate beauty grew.

John Hartington spent his vacation at Des Moines, having a laudable desire to see something of the world before returning to his native town, with his college honors fresh upon him. Swiftest of the college runners was John Hartington, famed for his leaping too, and measuring widest at the chest and waist of all the hearty fellows at the university. His blond curls cl.u.s.tered above a brow almost as innocent as a child's; his frank and brave blue eyes, his free step, his mellow laugh, bespoke the perfect animal, unharmed by civilization, unperplexed by the closing century's fallacies and pa.s.sions. The wholesome oak that spreads its roots deep in the generous soil, could not be more a part of nature than he. Conscientious, unimaginative, direct, sincere, industrious, he was the ideal man of his kind, and his return to town caused a flutter among the maidens which they did not even attempt to conceal. They told him all the chat, of course, and, among other things, mentioned the great sensation of the year,--the coming of the woman with her mystery, the purchase of the sunny upland, the planting it with clover and with mignonette, the building of the house of logs, the keeping of the bees, the barren rooms, the busy, silent life, the charities, the never-ending wonder of it all. And then the woman--kind, yet different from the rest, with the foreign trick of tongue, the slow, proud walk, the delicate, slight hands, the beautiful, beautiful smile, the air as of a creature from another world.

Hartington, strolling beyond the village streets, up where the sunset died in daffodil above the upland, saw the little cot of logs, and out before it, among blood-red poppies, the woman of whom he had heard. Her gown of white gleamed in that eerie radiance, glorified, her sad great eyes bent on him in magnetic scrutiny. A peace and plenitude of power came radiating from her, and reached him where he stood, suddenly, and for the first time in his careless life, struck dumb and awed. She, too, seemed suddenly abashed at this great bulk of youthful manhood, innocent and strong. She gazed on him, and he on her, both chained with some mysterious enchantment. Yet neither spoke, and he, turning in bewilderment at last, went back to town, while she placed one hand on her lips to keep from calling him. And neither slept that night, and in the morning when she went with milking pail and stool out to the gra.s.sy field, there he stood at the bars, waiting. Again they gazed, like creatures held in thrall by some magician, till she held out her hand and said,--

"We must be friends, although we have not met. Perhaps we ARE old friends. They say there have been worlds before this one. I have not seen you in these habiliments of flesh and blood, and yet--we may be friends?"

John Hartington, used to the thin jests of the village girls, and all their simple talk, rose, nevertheless, enlightened as he was with some strange sympathy with her, to understand and answer what she said.

"I think perhaps it may be so. May I come in beside you in the field?

Give me the pail. I'll milk the cow for you."

She threw her head back and laughed like a girl from school, and he laughed too, and they shook hands. Then she sat near him while he milked, both keeping silence, save for the p-rring noise he made with his lips to the patient beast. Being through, she served him with a cupful of the fragrant milk; but he bade her drink first, then drank himself, and then they laughed again, as if they both had found something new and good in life.

Then she,--

"Come see how well my bees are doing." And they went. She served him with the lucent syrup of the bees, perfumed with the mignonette,--such honey as there never was before. He sat on the broad doorstep, near the scarlet poppies, she on the gra.s.s, and then they talked--was it one golden hour--or two? Ah, well, 'twas long enough for her to learn all of his simple life, long enough for her to know that he was victor at the races at the school, that he could play the pipe, like any shepherd of the ancient days, and when he went he asked her if he might return.

"Well," laughed she, "sometimes I am lonely. Come see me--in a week."

Yet he was there that day at twilight, and he brought his silver pipe, and piped to her under the stars, and she sung ballads to him,--songs of Strephon and times when the hills were young, and flocks were fairer than they ever be these days.

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow," and still the intercourse, still her dark loveliness waxing, still the weaving of the mystic spell, still happiness as primitive and as sweet as ever Eden knew.

Then came a twilight when the sweet rain fell, and on the heavy air the perfumes of the fields floated. The woman stood by the window of the cot, looking out. Tall, graceful, full of that subtle power which drew his soul; clothed in white linen, fragrant from her fields, with breath freighted with fresh milk, with eyes of flame, she was there to be adored. And he, being man of manliest type, forgot all that might have checked the words, and poured his soul out at her feet. She drew herself up like a queen, but only that she might look queenlier for his sake, and, bending, kissed his brow, and whispered back his vows.

And they were married.

The villagers pitied Hartington.

"She's more than a match for him in years--an' in some other ways, as like as not," they said. "Besides, she ain't much inclined to mention anything about her past. 'Twon't bear the tellin' probably."

As for the lovers, they laughed as they went about their honest tasks, or sat together arms encircling each at evening, now under the stars, and now before their fire of wood. They talked together of their farm, added a field for winter wheat, bought other cattle, and some horses, which they rode out over the rolling prairies side by side. He never stopped to chat about the town; she never ventured on the street without him by her side. Truth to tell, their neighbors envied them, marvelling how one could extract a heaven out of earth, and what such perfect joy could mean.

Yet, for all their prosperity, not one addition did they make to that most simple home. It stood there, with its bare necessities, made beautiful only with their love. But when the winter was most gone, he made a little cradle of hard wood, in which she placed pillows of down, and over which she hung linen curtains embroidered by her hand.

In the long evenings, by the flicker of the fire, they sat together, cheek to cheek, and looked at this little bed, singing low songs together.

"This happiness is terrible, my John," she said to him one night,--a wondrous night, when the eastern wind had flung the ta.s.sels out on all the budding trees of spring, and the air was throbbing with awakening life, and balmy puffs of breeze, and odors of the earth. "And we are growing young. Do you not think that we are very young and strong?"

He kissed her on the lips. "I know that you are beautiful," he said.

"Oh, we have lived at Nature's heart, you see, my love. The cattle and the fowls, the honey and the wheat, the cot-the cradle, John, and you and me! These things make happiness. They are nature. But then, you cannot understand. You have never known the artificial--"

"And you, Elizabeth?"

"John, if you wish, you shall hear all I have to tell. 'Tis a long, long, weary tale. Will you hear it now? Believe me, it will make us sad."

She grasped his arm till he shrank with pain.

"Tell what you will and when you will, Elizabeth. Perhaps, some day--when--" he pointed to the little crib.

"As you say." And so it dropped.

There came a day when Hartington, sitting upon the portico, where perfumes of the budding clover came to him, hated the humming of the happy bees, hated the rustling of the trees, hated the sight of earth.

"The child is dead," the nurse had said, "as for your wife, perhaps--"

but that was all. Finally he heard the nurse's step upon the floor.

"Come," she said, motioning him. And he had gone, laid cheek against that dying cheek, whispered his love once more, saw it returned even then, in those deep eyes, and laid her back upon her pillow, dead.

He buried her among the mignonette, levelled the earth, sowed thick the seed again.

"'Tis as she wished," he said.

With his strong hands he wrenched the little crib, laid it piece by piece upon their hearth, and scattered then the sacred ashes on the wind. Then, with hard-coming breath, broke open the locked door of that room which he had never entered, thinking to find there, perhaps, some sign of that unguessable life of hers, but found there only an altar, with votive lamps before the Blessed Virgin, and lilies faded and fallen from their stems.

Then down into the cellar went he, to those boxes, with the foreign marks. And then, indeed, he found a hint of that dead life. Gowns of velvet and of silk, such as princesses might wear, wonders of lace, yellowed with time, great cloaks of snowy fur, l.u.s.trous robes, jewels of worth,--a vast array of brilliant trumpery. Then there were books in many tongues, with rich old bindings and illuminated page, and in them written the dead woman's name,--a name of many parts, with t.i.tles of impress, and in the midst of all the name, "Elizabeth Astrado," as she said.

And that was all, or if there were more he might have learned, following trails that fell within his way, he never learned it, being content, and thankful that he had held her for a time within his arms, and looked in her great soul, which, wearying of life's sad complexities, had simplified itself, and made his love its best adornment.