Chapter III

My aunt Sarah gave me my first book of poems. It had her name in it, and she wrote mine beneath hers on my seventh birthday. Within its worn blue covers was found a garland--old poems, old and fine--gathered from twenty gardens. The donor said that I could not read the book now, but that later I should. She said that evidently I was going to be fond of reading. So I was--I was already fond of it. And it was not so long before I read the garland, and not so long before I set to work to memorize certain favorite pieces. Before I was ten I knew by heart a number of these component blossoms. And by then I had found in the house other books of poetry.

My aunt Sarah at the time when she gave me the book, stood a pale, slender woman, dressed always, when she could, in white, not very strong, rather silent, and with beautiful eyes. Every side of Restwell life laid claim upon my mother's time. Aunt Sarah was not idle. She sewed swiftly and beautifully. Her long-fingered, delicate hands accomplished many a task in a house where now all must work. But she stood aside from planning and overseeing, from account-book and calculation. Her needle flashed, her long fingers wiped and dusted, but all the time heart and mind were traveling. She did not desire household authority. I think that it was only with strong relief that she saw matters flowing toward my mother for decisions. Her own decisions were almost wholly upon inner things--though that means, of course, that she did then choose and decide outer things yet to come. She was a great reader. But here, too, she read for practical aid in that other-lighted kingdom. Her inner theme was the ultimate union of all lovers. The strengthening of every perception, every intuition, that said, "It is so!" had become her intense preoccupation. She read to this end, thought to this end, held herself still and invited her intuitions. What marked her off from many women of her acquaintance who had also lost, who also dreamed reunion, was that she sought corroboration, related experience, acceptable evidence, not alone in the Bible or in books of devotion, but wherever she saw or heard of a rainbow glint. Her mind was bold in her good cause. A defined, intense, personal will, patient and massive, led her over the bound into a transcendentalism that gathered food from every sea. My grandfather, weary of trouble, turned definitely to "sacred" writings. But my aunt sought everywhere.

About an eighth of a mile from the house there lay, on the eastern slope of a little hill, the Restwell graveyard. Here were laid in earth the frames of my father and my uncle Robert, and of my grandmother beside two infants she had lost. And others were here, men, women, and children of my grandparents' generation, and older graves of the generation before these. Piety kept fair the Restwell burying-ground. Lack of working hands might involve old lawn and garden in barbarous upgrowths, but in the graveyard weeds were kept down, the grass duly cut and the flowers tended. My mother and Aunt Sarah both worked here. But my aunt Sarah was oftenest in the place. It had become for her a secret palace, a cloister, a refuge. Under the oak-tree she had put a cross for the man who was buried far away, where he died in prison. The Whitechurch mason made it for her, cut out of gray stone. Above it rose the oak, of a hundred years and more, with outcropping great roots. My aunt Sarah sat beneath it, with the cross before her. Upright and arms, looked at so, it quartered the field of the sky. She brought flowers and laid them against the base. She had a pansy-bed just for this. She laid against the stone every color of pansy. She scattered there fragrant leaves, bits of lavender and myrrh, leaves of rose geranium and citronalis. She planted straw-flowers--"immortelles"--so that in the autumn she might gather them, white and purple heads like clover, wider, sun-hued disks, and treasure them until the snows came. Then, a cluster at a time, she placed them against this cross, and with them sprays of cedar or white pine, ivy or holly. She had a stand of house plants and as they bloomed she cut from these and brought the glowing bits of color to the graveyard. The mounds of others there were not neglected. Flower and herb and evergreen went to these, too. She was scrupulous as to this. But the clinging passion was for the cross that had no mound.

As a child I spent much time in this graveyard. I remember it when I was five and I remember it when I was ten. I entered it with my mother or with my aunt, and here, while they worked or dreamed, I pursued my own ends. There was much that might entertain a child used to collating and devising for himself. With an old pair of scissors I might cut away dead roses, or make my own small haymows of shorn grass. Or I might play at various houses between the numerous upstanding oak roots. I had many mansions here, and with bits of clay and gravel made roads that linked the whole. The place overhung the river. In a far corner rose a growth of ailanthus whence came excellent long poles for many uses. In another corner grew a wild apple-tree. The apples reddened and hung among the green leaves. Later they might lie red upon the ground. I could not understand why my mother and my aunt would not let me eat them. They lay there, red, in the grass.

A stone wall divided in half the Restwell burying-ground. On the fairer aspect of the hill, with the richer trees and the rarer flowers, with the marble headstones and footstones and the half-dozen older flat slabs of granite, lay Restwell Forths. On the other side of the wall, in a stretch not untended and not unfair, but distinctly simplified, were Restwell servants. Here ranged themselves many small, upright wooden slabs, with two or three of stone showing resting-places of old, responsible negroes held in affection by the big house. The slabs were marked, the place was sweet, overwrought with dark, running periwinkle, with here and there a bush of lilac or althea, with locust-trees, heavy and sweet in May. But still there was the wall between, and a contrast running from of old.... I often scrambled over this wall and played hide-and-seek with myself in and out among the mounds and the wooden slabs. And, first and last, I learned to spell many words in the two-sided Restwell burying-ground. On our side of the wall lichen and moss were to be kept from the gravestones. I liked to follow my aunt as she made each name and the inscription beneath fair and clean. She read them all to me. Even before I could read I knew the graves by name and verse. But I learned to read before I was five.

The bank that sloped to the river was truly a fairy place of moss and fern and jutting rock and tremulous, slender trees. It early became to me an enchanted wood. There was a shelf where I could stand and throw small stones into the river over the bushy heads of willow and alder. Down in an arc went the flung stone; there followed a silver flash and a liquid sound, then widening rings. I stood here throwing stone after stone.... Sometimes there was a rabbit or a squirrel, and always there were birds and other winged things, and creeping, charming grotesques. Now and then I had a human playmate. At considerable intervals Ahasuerus came upon the scene. "Miss Sarah done axed me ter help her!" Ahasuerus worked for a time, then, dismissed, he and I crossed the wall and scampered over the matted periwinkle, past the graves of his color, to the long, sloping bank. Here, in the amplest camaraderie, we carried on Lilliputian explorations, industries. But Mandy's Jim almost always needed Ahasuerus in potato-patch or corn-field.

My aunt Sarah and I grew into a kind of communion. She was oftener in the graveyard than was my mother, and I was often there with her. She was also fond of walking by the river or through the home woods, and here I was her companion. My circle and hers found their point of interfusion. We had each a sense of Nature and of all musical language. That I was a child and she a woman made little difference. We could talk and listen each to the other. She had a way of repeating poems to me, and she let me say over to her the verses I learned. It was she who first told me old legends and romances. And it was she who most distinctly aided me to see the arabesque, the come and go, of natural phenomena, of night and day, rain and shine, the seasons, the return and rhythm of all things. She aided the birth of my sense of periodicity, directed my ear to the drum of time. She never condescended to me, but talked as to an equal. Of what she said much went by me like the speaking wind. But it went to return in later life and give me up then its meaning.

I recall many an hour spent with her. Here is one.

On a sunny morning we weeded the graveyard. Then we sat down under the oak and, taking a book that she had brought with her, she began to read while she rested. She often did this, and sometimes I pursued my own ends while she read, and sometimes I came to her and said, "Read it to me."

I said it this day. She looked at me with her beautiful, seeking eyes. "It's a piece by Edgar Allan Poe. I found it by chance in this old magazine. I read it yesterday, and now I'm reading it again. But you won't understand it. You had better keep on playing."

But I was tired of playing and said so, and lay down on the clean ground with my head against her knee. Suddenly she began to read. She read well, after a quiet, clear, impressive fashion. Be it understood that in speaking of my childhood I speak now according to its simple, momentary impressions, and now after the larger knowledge of the upheaping, remembering, sorting, comprehending years. Now I speak after the one book and now after the other. She read Poe's "Colloquy of Una and Monos."

UNA. "Born again!"

MONOS. "Yes, fairest and best-beloved Una, 'born again,'"

UNA. "Death!"

MONOS. "... You are confused and oppressed by the majestic novelty of the Life Eternal. Yes, it was of Death I spoke. And here how singularly sounds that word...."

On went my aunt Sarah's voice. The two lovers, both "dead," both living, moving, speaking in a land of added senses, new tones in the scale, pursue their colloquy. They speak of what they thought of Death, in the old world, and of the mistakes and woes of that world. And Monos had "died," and Una, a year later, had "died." And time had passed, and here they met, with emotion and memory clear, sonorous, golden-true. Una asks Monos for a detailed recital of his passage from the old plane into the other. He accedes and speaks further:

MONOS. "... Wearied at heart with anxieties which had their origin in the general turmoil and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some few days of pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with ecstasy the manifestation of which you mistook for pain, there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless and motionless torpor, and this was termed _Death_ by those who stood around me.

"Words are vain things. My condition did not deprive me of sentience....

"I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had ceased to beat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless. The senses were unusually active, although, eccentrically so--assuming often each other's functions at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense.... _All_ my perceptions were purely sensual. The materials furnished the passive brain by the senses were not in the least degree wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain or pleasures none at all.... And this was in truth the _Death_ of which these bystanders spoke reverently, in low whispers....

"They attired me for the coffin--three or four dark figures which flitted busily to and fro.... The day waned....

"And now from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses there appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all perfect. In its exercise I found a wild delight--yet a delight still physical, inasmuch as the understanding had in it no part. Motion in the animal frame had fully ceased. No muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled, no artery throbbed. But there seemed to have sprung up in the brain _that_ of which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence even an indistinct conception. Let me term it a mental, pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of man's abstract idea of _Time_. By the absolute equalization of this movement--or of such as this--had the cycles of the fundamental orbs themselves been adjusted. By its aid I measured the irregularities of the clock upon the mantel, and of the watches of the attendants. Their tickings came sonorously to my ears. The slightest deviation from the true proportion--and these deviations were omni-prevalent--affected me just as violations of abstract truth are wont, on earth, to affect the moral senses. Although no two of the timepieces in the chamber struck individual accords accurately together, yet I had no difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, and the respective momentary errors of each. And this--this keen, perfect, self-existing sentiment of _duration_, this sentiment existing (as man could not possibly have conceived it to exist) independent of any succession of events--this idea--this sixth sense upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first obvious and certain step of the intemporal soul upon the threshold of the temporal Eternity.

"It was midnight, and you still sat by my side.... They had deposited me in the coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly.... The perfume in my nostrils ceased. Forms affected my vision no longer. The oppression of the Darkness uplifted itself from my bosom. A dull shock like that of electricity pervaded my frame, and was followed by total loss of the idea of contact. All of what man has termed sense was merged in the sole consciousness of entity, and in the one abiding sentiment of duration. The mortal body had been at length stricken with the hand of the deadly _Decay_.

"Yet had not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation upon the flesh.... I was not unconscious of those movements which displaced you from my side, which confined me within the coffin, which deposited me within the hearse, which bore me to the grave, which lowered me within it, which heaped heavily the mold upon me....

"And here ... there rolled away days and weeks and months; and the soul watched narrowly each second as it flew, and, without effort, took record of its flight--without effort and without object.

"A year passed. The consciousness of _being_ had grown hourly more indistinct, and that of mere _locality_ had, in great measure, usurped its position. The idea of entity was becoming merged in that of _place_. The narrow space immediately surrounding what had been the body was now going to be the body itself....

"Many lustra had supervened. Dust had returned to dust. The form had food no more. The sense of being had at length utterly departed, and there reigned in its stead--instead of all things--dominant and perpetual--the autocrats _Place_ and _Time_. For that which was not--for that which had no form--for that which had no thought--for that which had no sentience--for that which was soulless, yet of which matter formed no portion;--for all this nothingness, yet for all this immortality, the grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours co-mates."

There was no more of the colloquy. It ended there, with the definiteness of a stone dropped into the river. Yet after the stone the widening rings! My aunt put down the book. "It says no more. But Una and Monos are talking, in happiness, each to the other. They move, they touch, they remember, reason, desire, and love. They speak of being 'born again' and of the 'august Eternal Life.' I think that as desire and will slept and rested, so now they awoke, moved, and gathering themselves together, found richer being in a richer world! At any rate, separation passed away like a dream."

She sat with her hands locked over her knees, looking afar. I had a little heap of acorns, and I played with these--one acorn, then a line, then two lines, then a square.

Ahasuerus taught me to swim, Mandy's Jim to shoot, my grandfather to ride. My mother taught me to read, to write, and to cipher. She carried me into geography and history, and through the gate of Latin. All persons and all things at Restwell taught me. I was born a listener and a gatherer--a giver, too, I hope, of what I thought valuable.... Out of a thousand faults I pick pride, an indolent will, some fear, some obscure strains of cruelty, fretted thin, I hope, by now. I see, too, oversensitiveness to blame, and some finesse. Now and then I lied, but not often; generally under some strong, imagined stress. Physically, I was fairly strong, fairly healthy. I was early used to being told that I had a good mind. "You have a good mind--you ought to study hard."--"You have a good mind; you might grow up to be the greatest help!" ... The wings to carry me, to lift my feet from the clogging faults, were a hunger and thirst after understanding, a sense for the cleanly and the harmonious, a considerable synthesizing power, a considerable power of idealization. So I ranged my first decade here at Restwell in Virginia--small tiger in small jungle, small lion in small desert, small man in small earth, small angel in small heaven.

Though I lived chiefly with grown persons there were times when I forgathered with children. Ahasuerus had a toddling brother, Creed, and a sister, Mimy. They were younger than I, but I made mud pies with them down by the creek that flowed past the quarters. And when we went to Whitechurch or to neighboring country houses I met children. And there were the Dallas cousins at Flowerfield, twenty miles away. Each summer they came to Restwell for two or three weeks--my aunt Kate and the four young Dallases, John, Miriam, Catherine, and Lewis. And, usually in October, my aunt Sarah went to Flowerfield for as long a time, and I went with her.

Flowerfield! That was a brick house somewhat larger than Restwell, but otherwise quite like it. It stood upon a hilltop and commanded a most lovely, wide view. Before the war Flowerfield had meant two thousand acres of rich land, green, watered meadows, and a famous breed of horses. During the war the land went down, the horses were taken away. The house stood in the path of a noted "raider." Together with its many outbuildings, it was first looted, then fired. Barns, stables, cabins, went off in flame. But the thick-walled house withstood. Great damage was done, but the strong shell rested. After the war the two thousand acres were parted into three lots. One moiety went for debt; one for some money with which to stock and cultivate the remaining third. The money it brought was little enough. There were no more famous horses. The damage done to the house could be but meagerly repaired. When I knew it as a child, bare indeed was the furnishing! The raider had taken all that could be taken and had smashed the rest. To help Flowerfield into a livable condition all that could be spared was sent from Restwell. And more fortunate neighbors had given with prompt kindness what they could. But all the Flowerfield region stood in the swathe of destruction. Not much could be given from one to the other. For years after the Surrender Flowerfield, house and place, exhibited a bareness not without its own distinction. War-wrecked, it sang like a ballad.

Of the young Dallases, John and Miriam were about of my age. John was--is--square-made, solid and good. Miriam was--is--Miriam!

Winter and spring I looked forward to their coming with summer to Restwell. My aunt Kate, my mother said, was like my father. I see now her strong, irregular face, her brown eyes, both intent and quizzical. She and my mother were good friends. "Cary"--"Kate"--I hear their voices now.

Major Dallas, like his father-in-law, Colonel Forth, like his county and like his state, was whelmed in the difficulties of a shattered order. He must build again, with effort, with struggle--must do his part in the building up, after new patterns, of the South. A young man still, he put hand and mind to his work, with determination, with courage and ableness. His left sleeve hung empty, two-thirds of his land must go, his house stood half a ruin. There were children to educate, a bedridden mother to keep in something like old comfort. He set to work. I do not remember him often at Restwell, but at Flowerfield I knew and liked him. He was a big man, magnetic, humorous, fond of children. Before the war, at the university, he had read law, had been admitted to the bar in '61. In '66 he rented the quaintest of law-offices in the shadow of the court-house in the county seat, four miles from Flowerfield. In two years he had become the principal lawyer of the county. There was law business enough, the lord of law knows, in those troubled years! But it was business for impoverished clients, individuals, fellow-Confederates, widows and orphans. Major Dallas made little money. But he grew rich in the good-will of his people. These were the years when Achilles drew the body of Hector around Troy. Major Dallas waked and wrought for his region, fought gloom and bitterness, cheered To-morrow, backed Time to bring in one and all as winners. He declined to be pessimistic as to the United States--even to be ironic over the "united." "If we're big enough, each man jack of us, North and South, we'll find that we are united!"

He turned gray early. But, for all his empty sleeve and his gallant record, he was a better soldier after the war than during it.

I loved Flowerfield. I see it in autumn with all its noble trees scarlet and gold, and, in the no great distance, blue waves of mountains. The house had--has--an emanation for me, indescribable, its own, welcome to the inner senses. I loved the bare, clean, little room where I slept with John, loved the old, wide stair, the big empty hall; loved the front porch, pillared differently from ours at Restwell; loved the wide, sunny two-storied back porch; loved the dogs that lay there. October is, to me, to this day, a royal month.

John and Miriam and I ranged together. Catherine and Lewis were too small for deep plans and purposes, long strides afield. But the first three owned the world in those Octobers.

In mid-October came the nutting, came the smell of wood smoke, came the Indian summer. We might be poor, we might be surrounded by dubitations and brain-rackings, we might encounter among our adult acquaintances sighs and furrowed brows, we might, at times, from visiting folk, hear bitter or indignant utterance when newspapers were unfolded and read, we might be dimly aware that we had a life of work before us. A bitter war had been fought with immediately bitter results. But yet children might be happy. On the whole, we children thought precious little about the war, or reconstruction, or poverty, or a new order ripped from the womb of the old. We thought at times, of course, archaically, queerly. But then surged in the vital present of chinkapin strings, ripening persimmons and black haws, dropping chestnuts and tumbling walnuts.

June again, when Aunt Kate and the children came to Restwell....

Miriam was said to be like her mother, as her mother was said to be like my father. Now she was active, now she was a dreamer. I have seen her for half an hour on end, sitting in the sun or in the shade, a little, motionless figure, her chin on her knees, her eyes on the ground. But when she arose she arose with a spring, became at once the whole-hearted player. She and I early found the corridor between our natures. I knew her--know her--from within, and she knows me.