Chapter VIII: Blackbird Diplomacy

_May 9th._ Something is dreadfully wrong with Caro, and for once she does not give me her confidence. She went to Milly’s night before last quite her own bright self, and came back to lunch yesterday another creature. A shower came up just after lunch, so I lay on my porch sofa until it passed, with David and Caro for company. I imagine things had gone wrong at the table. I saw, by Caro’s bright color and the high way she carried her pretty head when she came home, that trouble was brewing for somebody, and she probably found David’s sunny and unsuspicious good humor the negative complement of her own surcharged spirit. There had been at least a minor explosion; for when they came out to me they were both making an effort to appear quite like themselves. But Caro’s eyes were danger-signals; and, though David smiled and his voice had its usual deep evenness, his eyes kept a furtive and brooding watch on hers. She seemed in the gayest of spirits, yet there was some jangle in the mirth which had always rung sweet and true before.

The thunder was rattling overhead, and the wind-blown curtains of the rain shut out the hills beyond. David walked to the end of the porch and studied the clouds for a little before he came back.

“I was afraid this storm would spoil the drive you promised me yesterday,—” he began.

Caro’s eyes sparkled.

“You need not resort to the weather as an excuse,” she said, “I don’t want to go at all.”

David stared, and a slow color burned under his tanned skin. Then he looked half-amused.

“Caro must have been having some kind of an extra tilt with Cousin Jason, Mammy Lil,” he said, “and she thinks I’m an old jay, too, and keeps ruffling her feathers at me.—I was about to say that the sun would be out inside of an hour, and by five o’clock the roads will be in the pink of condition. I’ll show you what Peggy can really do in the way of speed.”

“I told you I don’t want to go,” said Caro, angrily.

“I beg pardon,” said David easily; “you told me you would go. I couldn’t possibly be mistaken.”

I was looking at Caro in open-eyed amazement. She had never spoken to David that way in her life—nor to any one since she had ceased to be a child. She caught my look, and colored deeply. Then she cuddled her face against mine so that neither David nor I could see it.

“Dear Mammy Lil, don’t look as if you didn’t know me,” she said, with a sudden little catch in her voice; “I’ve always told you I’m hateful, and you won’t believe it; when I convince you, don’t quit loving me.”

“You silly child,” I answered, patting the red-brown coil of curls; “I’ll never quit loving you, whether I’m dead or alive. But I was afraid you weren’t well.”

She laughed and pecked my cheek.

“I’m well as ever was.—Have Peggy ready, David: I’d like to go sixty miles an hour.—Oh, dear, I’m losing all my hairpins!”

She wasn’t at all. But she caught her hair with both hands, and vanished through one of the long windows. David looked after her with the set look which I had learned to know when he was little more than a baby. Then he, too, kissed me, and walked away, after putting the stand with my bell and a plate of biscuits on it close beside me.

I lay there puzzled and troubled. The rain stopped presently, and I crumbled the biscuits and flung them out on the grass, watching the birds idly.

Promptly at five David drove round with Peggy, his favorite mare, her beautiful head held as high as Caro’s own, and as free from torments of check-rein and blinders. She shone like satin, and stepped with a proud consciousness of her own worth and her master’s confidence in her. David sat chatting with me during the ten minutes Caro kept him waiting. She had on the pale green lawn when she came out, and a most fetching hat which she had herself concocted to go with it. I beheld her adornment with dismay. The lawn was more lace than lawn, and I knew she had planned it for what she called a “partyfied” dress. She usually went driving with David bareheaded, and in whatever garments she happened to have on. Her finery boded him no good; and I realized with a sinking heart that if I had had the wit to keep my astonishment out of my face she would have stuck to her first refusal, and the drive would have been postponed to a more auspicious day. David was riding to disaster—and I had opened the way.

It was almost dark when they came home, and I had been back in bed for some time. Caro came in looking distractingly pretty, and sweeter than a naughty child should. I knew by the lavish bounty of her caresses that she had treated David very badly indeed, and was torn between a desire to take her in my arms and get the whole story out of her, and a wish to set her in the corner till she should return to her normal state of mind. But I remembered what I had promised David months ago, and repressed my itch to meddle. She had always confided in me before, and unless she did now I must be dumb.

David, I did not see until morning. He had brought Caro home and had returned at once to Chatterton, sending me word he had an engagement and would not be at home until after I was asleep. It was after midnight when I heard him come in. This morning he came to my room as usual, but his eyes looked as if he had not slept. I pretended to see nothing, because he wished it.—But what had happened to Caro? If she had been at Cousin Jane’s I might have suspected some mischief-making; but she went only to Grace’s. Whatever caused the change, it goes deep. She has been in her own room all day, and I have not even heard her sing.

* * * * *

_May 12th._ Caro has left us and gone to Cousin Jane’s—gone there to live. She went day before yesterday, and I have felt too stunned to think.

She stayed in her room all day, except at lunch time, and came out late in the afternoon, looking white and tired, but with that same danger signal in her eyes. I was under the maple, and she sat on the stool beside my cot.

“Mammy Lil,” she began, with a forced lightness, as though she spoke only of trifles, “I’ve been packing my traps today. You’re so much better now, you don’t really need me all the time, and I think I ought to go to Cousin Jane. Cousin Chad’s my real guardian, you know; and they’ve been awfully good about lending me to you when you were so sick.”

I felt blinded at first by the blow. “Lending” me Caro—when she had never stayed a whole month together away from me since she was seven years old, except for the years at boarding school! My head swam, and there was such a roaring in my ears I couldn’t hear all she said. She wasn’t looking at me, but her voice went on with the foolish words, till I pulled myself together.

“Has Cousin Jane been trying to make you think it’s your duty to go and wait on her, Caro, after you’ve grown up in this, your real home? She doesn’t need you, child; there’s no call for such a sacrifice.”

“She hasn’t said a word about needing me,” protested Caro. “I just think I ought to go.”

“Are you sure—forgive me, dearie—but do you really think she wants you there to live—for always?”

“I telephoned her this morning. I’m sure she’s delighted. She does love me,—only it’s in her queer way.”

“Caro—” I said, and stopped. We had lived in her and for her so many years. I could not suggest that she owed us anything. The tears came to my eyes, but I held them back.

“Dear,” I went on, “I’ve never tried to force your confidence, and I can’t now. Something is wrong, I know—some trifle, probably, that a little honest frankness would set right. But I know when we are young we come to a place where we must manage our own affairs, no matter how we bungle them or how many hearts we break; it’s the way we all learn at times. But darling, remember that my love waits to help you, if you ever want its service. And, whatever you do, Caro, don’t do it in anger like a child. It is the mark of a woman to walk in love, and to serve love only, even where she must give the deepest hurt.”

She sat looking across the hills, only her profile toward me, but I saw her lip quiver. She dropped her head on my shoulder and snuggled her face under my chin.

“You’re the sweetest mammy! You know I love you—more than ever I did in my life. And I’m coming to see you so often you’ll think I’m living here. But I’m sure I ought to go. There’s the buggy now; Cousin Jane said she’d send it over. My trunk is all ready; she’ll send for that, too. I thought I’d rather you’d tell Daddy Jack and David good-bye for me. Won’t you let me take you back to the house first?”

“No,” I said; “David will help me, and your Daddy Jack. It isn’t time yet.”

She caught her breath a little, kissed me with a sorry effort at playfulness, and went towards the buggy. I watched it driving out the gate to the pike.

Neither David nor the Peon came, and after awhile Josie came out to say that “Mr. John” had telephoned he would have to spend the night in the city. She wheeled me to the porch, and I was back in bed before David came in. I was thankful for once that the Peon was away.

David went to his solitary dinner, and then sat by me in the twilight, stroking my hand.

“What struck Caro to go off again?” he asked, in a tone he tried hard to make casual. “Josie says she told her she was off for a visit.”

“She went to Cousin Jane’s—went to stay, I mean. She’ll change her mind in a few days, I suppose. She has been upset for a day or two.”

“To Cousin Jane’s—to stay?” he repeated in bewilderment. “And left you here—like this?” he added in indignant unbelief.

“Dear, something drove her. She’s unhappy about something—there’s some mistake: and the need to keep it to herself is on her. It makes me feel—oh, Davy, boy, I’ve always thought I was a real mother to you children; but I’m only the best substitute for a mother you’ve known. If I were truly Caro’s mother—if I had done all I thought I was doing—the child would have told me. You are both suffering for nothing—because I failed.”

He bent his cheek to mine.

“You’ve never failed in anything, sweetest mother in the world. And Caro loves you just as I do—I’d swear it. Sometimes you can’t help hurting the people you love best. I—I’m hurting you myself; and I can’t help it. I’d give my right hand to help it; but I can’t—yet.”

“There’s no need, Davy, dear,” I said steadily, glad that the dark had fallen to curtain my eyes. “Don’t try to be anything with me, or to say anything, but what is natural and right to you. The one thing I couldn’t get over, dear, would be your playing a part with me. I understand; and I can wait—a life-time, if you wish.”

He kissed my hand, and sat there till the moon rose over the eastern hills and strewed the lawn with shadows. A mocking-bird stirred in his sleep and sang softly to himself. I could not speak. I lay straining my eyes through the dark to see his face, but it was all in the shadow. He rose to go at last, and, before I knew it, unbidden words had risen from some subconscious depth and uttered themselves through my lips.

“David,” I said, with a sudden, foolish up-lift of my heart, “I’m going to be walking all about by Thanksgiving; and before the year is out I will help with my own hands to decorate this house for your and Caro’s wedding. I don’t know how I know it; but I do!”

“Amen,” said David solemnly. “Mammy Lil, you’re a corker when it comes to prophesying. Keep up the habit; it’s sure comforting; and you always could see further through a stone wall than anybody else.”

He had—or feigned—more faith in my prophecy than I had myself. I felt like a fool who has published his folly to the world. And as I lay there, tearless and sleepless the long night through, I had no hope for David, and only a dull anguish at thought of the girl I had called my daughter so long.

* * * * *

_May 13th._ The world is all in a mist this morning as the sky blossoms above the eastern hills. The wren sings first, bringing the tears for which my lids have burned all night. A cardinal calls somewhere—_Cheer! Cheer!_—no, it is a mocking-bird, for his own notes bubble out after his cardinal call, before he wanders into a thrasher’s song, repeating his notes as carefully as “the wise thrush” himself. There he is, on the topmost twig of that mist-dimmed oak. He has tuned his voice to the oriole’s carol now, but again his own notes bubble through. Now he scolds like an angry wren, following the tirade with harsh cries and the blackbird’s censorious _tsck!_ Then he slips into a catbird melody—a jumble of music, jeering, and captious squawks. Gradually the music overflows all else. Clearer and sweeter grow the notes, slow, soft, and wondrous pure. His head is thrown up in rapture while the flood of melody rises and swells till it sweeps him bodily into air. He opens his mist-gray wings and tail, spreading to the light the gleaming white of the in-folded feathers, and rises through the vapors to clearer air, singing as one to whom all mists are crystal clearness, all darkness as the light. He trembles at the height an instant, poised above the vapor-shrouded earth, while his song floats upward to the heaven of which it speaks,—a blending of calm and rapture, of aspiration and peace. Back to his perch he falls, still singing, content with earth as with heaven, and rises once again, to poise an instant, to fall, to rise, again and yet again.

It is the Song of the Open Vision. Haunting, appealing, alluring, the rapturous notes search the listener’s heart to draw response from every memory of mist-drenched darkness dissolved in growing light.

* * * * *

_May 14th._ The Peon is the comfort of my life. I dreaded telling him about Caro, and behold, he knew all about it!

Cousin Chad had been in town and came out on the same train with him yesterday afternoon. He couldn’t refrain from crowing a little about Caro and his dear Jane—so capable and sensible, so equal to every emergency. And it was her doing, after all: I know she never intended for me to know it. But she met Caro in the road on her way back from Grace’s that day, and made the child go by home with her. Then she—to quote Cousin Chad—“was able to make her see the indelicacy of her establishing herself in the same house with a young man whom gossips were accusing her of trying to capture!” The Peon at this point expressed polite dissent from Cousin Chad’s approval of his wife’s tactful performance; and my pious relative waxed righteously indignant, and assumed the air of a protector of the defenceless orphan. Whereupon the Peon took refuge in his paper and Cousin Chad simmered in that condemnatory silence of his which always seemed to me worse than any possible swear-words.

But the Peon doesn’t feel at all upset about Caro and David; the only thing that troubles him is that I should be left alone again during the day. So far as David is concerned, the Peon thinks Caro would never have gone if she hadn’t cared for him, to some extent, at least, in the way Cousin Jane accused her of doing—which is certainly reasonable enough. And as to her loving David and yet treating him as I’m sure she did, the Peon begs me to remember some rather cold-blooded performances of my own in our courting days.

“Do you remember the night after Jessie Martin’s wedding?” he demanded. “After that night, and your marrying me six months later, I lost my faith in a girl’s ‘no.’ If I had it to go over again, I’d not lose a night’s sleep on account of it, my lady: and so I told David as he drove me home from the station.”

“Oh, you told him, then?”

“I did. And I told him to give Caro plenty of rope, and your Cousin Jane would soon hang herself with it.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much of anything. He seems to think Mrs. Grackle only furnished the occasion for Caro’s real feeling toward him to come to the front. He’s pretty sore, I imagine. But don’t you worry your dear head. Lovers would miss half the fun of the game if they couldn’t be drowned in misery now and then. Just let them alone and let them get all that’s coming to them. They’ll work through it somehow, and straighten it out to their perfect satisfaction when they get ready—and not before.”

“You didn’t let it alone,” I said reproachfully.

“No,” he said; “that’s why I’m so well posted about the course to pursue. I’ve done all that’s necessary myself.”

His eyes laughed a little, and I laughed back. Maybe I was a true prophet after all. Anyway, I musn’t look like a graveyard just because we’re all lonesome, and David is so quiet as he comes and goes. And if I’m not to look like a graveyard, the best way is not to feel like one.

* * * * *

_May 17th._ Things are happening so fast they make my head swim. David is gone, too; and I feel like an old hen who has raised a pair of wild geese and seen them go flying out of sight in opposite directions.

He fixed it all with the Peon before he said a word to me. Then he sat by my cot, with those coaxing ways of his—I knew some kind of a wrench was coming. He wanted to go out to Washington and take charge of the Peon’s apple orchard there and finish planting the land. He’d been thinking of it for some time. The only reason he hesitated about going was the leaving me alone: but I needed Caro more than I needed him; and if he went—.

“But oh, my dear, I don’t!” I cried. “You are my first, my best of children! And as for having Caro—I’ll have her when the time comes of which I told you the other night. I don’t want her before.”

“Then you’d rather I wouldn’t go?” he asked, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “You’ve had such an awful pull, little mother, and been so brave about it: and I know Caro and I helped to drain the life out of you before you went away. I’ll stay if you want me to.” He bent his head above my hand, and I saw his mouth was set.

“I’d not hold you a minute, boy,” I said; “distance can’t separate us. I’ve never been separated from you yet, and never will be while you love me. It isn’t your being near me that I want: it’s your emancipation, through life, into freedom of life. The more living you do, the closer we’ll come together, though the living be done on the other side of the globe. When would you like to start?”

“Tonight?” he said, inquiringly.

“Tonight,” I answered. “And the farm here?”

“Uncle Milton knows what to do. And I’ve made Uncle Jack a schedule to follow. It will be all right.”

“And you’re going for how long?”

“Forever and a day. Tell Caro so.”

“Very well,” I said, “I’ll tell Caro forever and a day. But what shall I tell this old lady who loves you so?”

“Tell her I’ll come at the drop of a hat or the click of a telegraph, day or night, whenever she wants me—forever and a day. And Mammy Lil—what’s the use of talking? You understand.”

He pushed his head up under my hand as a signal that one of the rare pettings was in order: and presently he picked me up in his strong arms and carried me to his room, where I lay on the bed and watched him pack his trunk in utter defiance of all known principles of the art.

He found some comfort in doing it, too. His face shows care and lack of sleep, but he whistled a bit as he dropped his shooting boots on the bosom of a shirt, and made a soft place for the butt of his gun with a felt hat. He isn’t entirely hopeless about the outcome, no matter how miserable he is: it is poor little Caro who will get the heaviest end of the mischief Cousin Jane’s meddling has produced. And that thick-headed, thick-skinned old Pharisee will go scot free herself. Oh, dear! I’d like to be good! But it is such a strenuous undertaking with Cousin Jane in the family: St. John himself couldn’t manage it; and I never was cut out for a saint.