Chapter 4
Chapter 4 of In the Garden of Delight by L. H. Hammond. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Kathleen Bond. The Dark of the Year. November 30th.
The deepest joys can never be put into words, but lying here in my own dear room, close under the long windows which form its eastern side, and looking out across the valley to the familiar hills beyond, I know there is one spot on the map more beautiful than anything make-believe can show.
The peon and David left me only an hour ago. The real ones, I mean. And out on the lawn, Uncle Milton is pretending to rake invisible leaves, looking towards my windows every few minutes to assure himself that I am really here. Near the wall of honeysuckle along the pasture fence,
the cardinal and his wife are flitting about, just as I left them three years ago. And in the lilac outside my window, where all the springtime beauty sleeps safe in the sheltering buds, a Carolina wren proclaims the triumph of days to come. His spring song is a bubbling rhapsody of present love and delight, but his winter song is vibrant with the joy of things unseen. He sings as one who carries spring in his heart always, as vivid a reality in December
as when all the woods are green. To doubts, questions, and hopes he has one answer, and he gives it joyously under the darkest skies. Will earth awake again? Will sunshine come? Will life reign an evident triumph, and winter and darkness pass? Surely, surely, surely, sure. The rich notes thrill with joy of assurance,
and shake him bodily as he stands with upthrown head and pulsing throat, wagon from beak to tail. But, like many another of the sons of the prophets, his gift of open vision lies close to his love of fun. His tail jerks with a wildness suggestive of broken gearings in his little insides
as he dashes into his scorg and accelerando, singing it to Capo with a comical exaggeration of his former style. Surely, surely, surely, sure. He cocks his head, flirts his tail, gives me a sharp look from his sharper eye, and whisks around the house in a twinkling.
And Grace Wood is coming to see me tomorrow. I have been good and waited until I am quite rested, and now I am to have my reward. But I did not know until I came home that George died two years ago. There were never two people happier than they. and yet she has gone on writing to me all this time
the same sunshiny, hopeful, heartening letters she sent me when I first left home. That was always Grace's way. Everything that came to her hurt or pleasure went out from her again only as help to somebody who needed it.
I haven't seen cousin Jane yet and David says she's been simmering for days and is liable to boil over any minute. She came an hour after I reached home, though requested to stay away until I sent for her.
But the peon caught her at my door and turned her back. She insisted she had something of the greatest importance to explain to me. But the peon is an awesome person when he does lay down the law, and she hasn't been back since. I can't help wondering if it is something about Caro,
though it can't be, for I've been Caro's mother confessor too long to be learning anything about her from Cousin Jane. Besides, Caro will be here in three more weeks after all these years and years. December 9th.
Grace came, her old dear self, unchanged except that the look of detachment from herself was deepened in her clear sweet eyes and about her smiling tender mouth. We spoke of George as if he were still with her,
as indeed I think he is, and of Millie, now quite grown, and sharing with Carol the honors of Chatterton Beldum. We had a beautiful time together and chatted and giggled as we have done these forty years
whenever occasion offered. And she went away, promising to come soon again if I would keep on getting better. And so I would have done, but for Cousin Jane. She was driving down the pike and saw Grace with her own eyes coming through the gate. She drove on down the road a bit till Grace was out of sight
and then swooped down on me like a blackbird on a worm. Josie tried to stop at the front door, but she had known Josie from her pickin' any days, and if she hadn't, it wouldn't have mattered, for Cousin Jane is not a person to be frustrated by darkies. She knocked one sepulchraly on my door and opened it on the instant. She wore her best Sunday air, and I'd me like a familiar of the
holy office about to put a heretic through a course of sprouts. Well, lady, she began, settling weightily into Grace's chair. So you live to get back home after all. I hope you're as grateful to Providence as you ought to be. Her tone made it evident that though she might hope it, she certainly didn't expect it. You've gone off mightily in your looks, she continued. Not that you weren't always sort of peaked and skinny looking. Slender,
Letitia used to call it. Do you think your mind's getting straight, Annie? It's straight, what there is of it, I said. But I'm tired just now, Cousin Jane. I can't talk very well. You see, Grace has been here. Didn't I see her? She demanded indignantly. That's why I came. If you can see a chatter like her, I reckon you can see me. I told John Bird I wanted to see about Caroline. My tired eyes opened at once. What is it? I asked. Caroline is getting grown up.
She was 19 last June. I've tried my best to keep beau and foolishness away from her, but everything in town looks like was after her last summer. And the worst of it was, Caroline liked it. The corners of my mouth took an upward curve. You wait till I get through, Missy, and you'll be laughing the other side of your mouth.
Caroline is hail fellow well met with every boy in this town except David Bird. And she knows perfectly well, for I told her, that Chadwell and I and you and John Bird intend her to marry David. The room swam round and I closed my eyes. Speech was impossible.
Good land, Liddy, don't go to fainting. I didn't know you were such a baby. You needn't get so scared, child. Jane Grackle is pretty safe to get her own way. And long as your way is my way, you'll get yours too.
She'll marry him yet. Young folks haven't any sense. They need managing, and I... For heaven's sake, don't try to manage, Caro, I gasp. And as for telling her I intended her to marry David,
go before you say something else that will make forgiveness impossible. Cousin Jane turned purple. I saw that as my eyes closed again. She rose stiffly with rustling skirts. If I didn't know you'd lost what little sense the Lord gave you, Liddy Bird,
I'd box your ears for your impudence. I'll go when I get ready, miss. I didn't tell Caroline you said you intended her to marry David. I know you've never said a word about it. I just took it as a matter of course.
Chad well and I feel it our duty to provide for her. Not in money, of course. She has quite a tidy little fortune of her own. And, of course, you and John Bird expect to leave David all you've got. They won't need anything from us.
But we want to see her settled. And David's steady and reliable and a real good business boy for all you've raised him. So harem, scarrem, and it stands to reason with your keepin' Caroline all the time like you did, and throwing away the good stout clothes I provided for her. To waste your own money in faulty roles, and good as adopting her, you might say that you
picked her out for David and meant to leave them your money, don't you? I swept together my floating wits, steadied them with a supreme effort, and considered for an instant, while I felt Cousin Jane's angry stare, battering at my closed lids. I must tell her something and nothing. Caro and David are like our own children, I said weakly. We want the happiness and nothing else. If they love one another as brother and sister, it's quite to be expected, don't you think?
Whatever made you think we wanted a marriage brought up as they have been, do you mean you won't leave them the money? I mean, money has nothing to do with it. We expect to do all we can for them and to let them be happy in their own ways, not in ours. Well, anyway, Suits Caroline, that's not my way, and that makes mischief.
I can see that plain enough, and I told her so. I scolded her, good. And it's my opinion, David's in love with her. I caught him looking at her one day when they were fishing down by the mill, and I just happened to go by in the buggy.
I couldn't get a word out of him when I asked him about it, and when I told him I'd given Carolina talking to, and I'd set my head on his having her. He glared at me as if I was trying to murder him and told me to let Caroline alone
and let her marry whoever she wanted to. He ain't been near me since and won't hardly speak to me. And Caroline behaved like a spitfire when I went to her about it. But I believe David's willing if she'd be, but she ain't yet. You may as well know there's going to be trouble when she comes home.
It ain't like it used to be. And you better get up out of that bed and be getting ready to help straighten things out. How much longer she would have stayed there, I don't know. Her voice, near and strident as it was, was drifting off into a world that seemed far away when the door opened with soft quickness and David was in the room.
Before he could speak, cousin Jane was lumbering away, his eyes driving her like bayonets. He poured out something and held it to my lips and then sat stroking my hand as gently as Caro could have done. And for days and nights I lay here in the clutch of the old weakness
and the old pain, and scarcely heeding either in the blackness of this new fear. I have been trying for days to write it all down, thinking maybe I could face it better so, and find some way of deliverance from Cousin Jane's cataclysmic diplomacy. The caro should marry David. Has there ever been a time when I didn't hope for it? And I have never
said it, even to the peon himself, for fear the very wall should carry the secret and make the hope impossible. And now, if Jane grackle, but there's no use railing. When one's hopes are in ruins, it takes all one's strength to face the disaster. If I waste mine in reproaches, I shall turn coward, and then grumpy will rule my world. December 17th. Gray days with sullen skies which will neither shine nor storm. The mockingbirds have entered their winter silence, and I me
indifferently as they hop about under my windows, picking up the crumbs which Josie scatters daily for my feathered guests. They never come together at this time of the year. Each goes his own path in solitude as well as in silence. But the flickers are more sociable, and the wrens are always in pears. The cardinal and his wife come together every morning. She gently indifferent as usual, and he the devoted lover of all the year round. Over in the pasture, the meadowlarks sing
half-heartedly, and a titmouse protests sturdily against their sentimental pathos. He is pecking at a magnolia seed tucked under his toes as he sits in the beach at breakfast. Here, here, here, here, he exclaims. He believes in making the best of things, does the titmouse, and holds his crest as high as these dark, raw days
as when he goes courting in a world that is in gala attire for the occasion. And if the pain isn't better yet, the weakness is, and that is always the worst part of it. I shall be out in my wheelchair yet by the time Carol comes. And as to Cousin Jane's nonsense, she may make mischief, has made it evidently.
But if they're really made for each other, as I have hoped for so long, surely an old woman's foolish tongue can never ruin their lives. Surely, surely, surely, sure. Oh, bless the little red-brown seer. He tilts on the lilac bush a second,
winks at me distinctly, and is off with a whisk of his tail, which says plainly, Don't be more of a fool than you must be, old pal. And I won't.
December 24th. How full of happiness one's world can be. Caro is not much bigger than her feathered namesake out of doors, but the place overflows with her presence. I was afraid Cousin Jane wouldn't let her stay here after the late unpleasantness and was lying on the south porch the other day trying to devise
some way to make my peace with her when she drove around the house and over the grass and stopped her buggy close to my chair. Oh, Cousin Jane, I'm so glad to see you, I exclaimed. I've been wanting to ask you to let Carol come straight to me and stay with us while she's at home. I haven't had it for three years, Cousin Jane, and I can make it all right with her about David, I'm sure. I knew you could do something if you were a man to try, she said with her severest kiss-a-peace
manner, which always aroused an unreasonable combativeness in my unregenerate soul. I'm perfectly willing, Liddy, to let bygones be bygones I never bear malice, even against ill-tempered folks I came over to say if you'd do what you could with Caroline I'd let her stay here
She always was keen to please you Why, I never could see, but she is And I'll not let my personal feelings stand in the way when it comes to discharging my duty to that poor motherless girl. She can come.
Thank you, Cousin Jane, I said heartily. You're welcome, Liddy, you're welcome. I don't hold anything against you. I want to set you a Christian example. Maybe it'll have some effect on you.
Now you're all broken down with having too much of your own way. Looks like with all the afflictions the Lord sent on you, and old as you are, you might be learning better. I suppose I am a sinner, but somehow all my life, whenever Cousin Jane takes her religion in both hands
and tries to ram it into me in her best pile-drive manner, my own scuttles off and dives into the first rat hole it can find. And I have a dreadful time dragging it out again and making it help me behave. So I took a long look at the blackbirds under the maple, piously jabbing the English sparrows to discourage their greediness about crumbs,
before I said soberly, I don't believe the Lord sent me any afflictions. I think he just tries to teach me how to get the good out of what comes and to rise by it. I think that's one of his special jobs in this world, trying to turn our afflictions into wings. Well, we all know you're sort of half-crack, Liddy, said Cousin Jane, with a manner intended to be genial. She was evidently bent on not quarreling. Just do your best for Caroline, she gathered up the reins. Cousin Jane,
I said quickly, don't say a word more to Caro about those things, please. I'll do as I see fit, Liddy, she answered stiffly. Being willing to let you help don't mean I can trust you to manage things. Well, goodbye. Do try to get up and take some exercise.
It'll do you good. I'm a worker myself and always was. And you see how strong I am? Not but what I could complain if I wanted to, like some. She disappeared round the house, tucking her buggy robe closely around her with one hand as she drove.
So, yesterday morning, I was out on the front porch, watching the road with my glasses. And there they came, whirling in from the pike in the open car, the top being down that I might see her afar off. Kara was driving, and David beamed beside her, while the peon beamed on the back seat. The whole place feels her presence and overflows with her music, her laughter, her sweet and tricksy ways. She is off with the young folks in Chatterton now,
helping with the Christmas tree at the church. But before she left, she wheeled me out to my car under the maple tree, or superintended Uncle Milton's doing it, while she fluttered about with the pillars and scolded us for letting her do all the work. She scattered crumbs for the birds just as she used to, and then cuddled down on the same little stool where she used to sit, her curly brown head on my pillars. Not make-believe anymore, thank heaven, but Caro and the real bird
corners. We were silent a while, and then she began to talk. All the love and nonsense and little intimate confidences that had always come when we were alone, but not a word of David, nor of Cousin Jane. I could not let our first talk begin a silence between us, so I told her what had happened. She had flushed a little at first, but her laughter bubbled as she kissed me. Sweet mammy, don't you think I know Cousin Jane?
I knew you never said it nor meant it, and I'm sure you'd let me marry the man in the moon if I wanted to. I did get mad with her for talking to David. That rather passed bounds. But David's a darling and as sensible as can be.
We thrashed it all out afterwards, and we aren't going to make ourselves unhappy because Cousin Jane's a born donkey and can't help it. Don't you bother about it a minute. We'll both of us get married some of these days,
and you'll have four children to love you instead of two. And there isn't anybody else yet, I asked, my face turning to hers as I lay, and her clear eyes looking into mine. I don't think there is with David, she said, considering.
But as for me, Mammy Lil, would you rather be a young man's darling or marry a very old and rich and apoplectic gentleman, worry him to death fast, and be happy and independent forever after.
Who is the young man? Oh, anybody. I haven't decided. But I suppose I could get one. You know, I wrote you about the boys last summer
and how wild the cousin Jane was. She was more fun than the boys. You don't really want me to marry, do you? I'm having such a good time. She sat up and waved her hand. There's Millie and I must go. Now, lie here and be good till I get back and I'll never marry anybody you don't want me to.
And she ran down to the gate, pinning her hat on as she went. December 30th. Notebooks are superfluous when I can have Caro. It is so good to see one so pretty, so eager, so joyous, so young in body and soul. She is the very spirit of youth, with her swift outgoing life, her quick response to it on all sides, her gay resourcefulness in the little emergencies of her small world. I forget my body and all its pain-worn helplessness while she dances through the house.
It doesn't matter so much that I must watch in idleness while the life I love sweeps by, if somebody else has my own vivid joy in it, a joy unhampered by weariness or pain. No wonder the girls can't stir without her, nor resent it that she draws the boys as honey draws flies. I can't see that she cares to draw any one of them yet, though she dearly loves to draw them all. She is in that kitten stage which comes to every girl alive.
She wants to play, and she finds the new game fascinating. What the boys find, it doesn't concern her yet. She is exploring the possibilities of the game. How David feels to water is more than I can tell. He is as frankly fond of her as when he used to carry her across the muddy places down by the brook
and tell her fairy tales while they popped corn by the winter fire. But as to that look in his eyes whereof Cousin Jane prated, well, I've never seen it, and I rather doubt if she did either. Yet somehow I can't help the uneasy feeling that she has hodowed my secret hopes. She never had influence enough to counteract anything other members of the family might elect to do,
but whomever she sided with was a subject for condolence. She could never be suppressed when she espoused a cause, and her well-meant activities were invariably fatal to the best-laid plans. What have I done that, in addition to all my other afflictions, Cousin Jane should thrust herself upon me as an ally? I had counted so comfortingly upon her opposition. David was never fond of her, and it is only of late years that she has ceased to predict for him a future
of state support. It isn't that she's fond of the boy now. It's because Cousin Chad found out how he managed that affair for the peon last winter, and because the farm here at Bird Corners is becoming one of the showplaces, agriculturally, of this part of the state. And if a richer suitor appears, she'll discard David like an old shoe. I confess I am taking great comfort in the very apparent devotion of David's old antagonist, Robert White. He is older than David and is advancing rapidly
in one of the largest banks in the city, of which his father is an important director. Bob is a nice fella, little spoiled by prosperity, and his prospective fortune quite overshadows Davids. In fact, he is one of the catchers of this part of the state. He has been staying out here at his father's ever since Caro came home and makes no secret of the reason. If Cousin Jane becomes aware of him, she will espouse his cause con amore and my own hopes will have a rosier appearance.
Poor Bob. I don't bear him a bit of malice, but I must shunt Cousin Jane off on somebody. January 5th. Caro left us last night,
protesting as she went and insisting that she would come home in defiance of everybody if I had any more back sets. But we all want her to finish the year
under her new singing master. Her voice is really wonderful and she ought not to stop yet. The six months will be gone before we know it, and then she will come to stay. For myself, I have stored up delight enough in these ten days to brighten this dark January weather for weeks to come.
And the days are already lengthening. Spring is on the way, in fact, and summer won't be far behind. January 10th. What winter colors could bedeck the world I never knew until today. First came the rain, a soft misted down-dropping,
which fell noiselessly on the half-frozen earth, softening the icy ridges in the road beyond the porch till they crunched under Uncle Milton's heavy feet and splashed into the water collecting in their ruts. Long before sunset, they wheeled me back to my room,
where the thickening clouds shut us into a twilight gloom through which the north wind's voice cut icily. By morning the clouds were gone, and with them had vanished the workaday earth. In its place is a world of fairy,
of glitter, of fire, of pallid white. Over all the fields the snow lies thick, down to the very edge of the brook. But above the snow, from the smallest weed whose skeleton shakes in the bitter wind,
to the topmost twig of the tallest tree is silver and fire and ice. The stubble is all one elfin glitter, and beyond the gate, along the pike, where dried goldenrod, pokeberry, mustard, and all earth's wild outcast beauty blossomed months before are billows of frost-wrought loveliness as pure as pearls and as delicate as the fronds of ferns. Overhead the sky is deepest blue, rich foil and background for the trees, all silver here, all glitter there, and everywhere starred
with flashing points of red and blue and orange, as some jagged point of ice catches the sunlight and tears it into dazzling shreds of color. Deep blue overhead, but everywhere along the horizon, a soft, colorless, distant sky across which the half-congealed moisture of the air
draws its dimming yet invisible veil. The hills are pale, aloof, but here and there the low sun strikes them and smites the glory of their treetops into a halo of pearl and fire about their brows.
And what may be the beauty of life more abundant when the beauty of life withdrawn clutches the heart like this? January 13th. There is nobody to fellowship with today but the blackbirds and the English sparrows.
David is off lecturing at some farmer's institutes, and the peon left this morning for a week's trip. Grumpy is here, as usual, and the pain in my spine. But I am not of a mind to fellowship with them. They can sulk together in the corner if they want to.
But when the dark shuts out, even the scandal-monger and sparrows, the room is a bit empty and lonesome-looking. Grumpy and the back don't count. They are both in the skeleton closet. But the key seems lost,
and they have an unpleasant way of peeping through the crack of the door. There's no sense in staying here this night, so it's ho for make-believe for me. January 15th. When one can't have the big things one wants,
one can at least play with the little things one has, and in doing so may learn with growing thankfulness how great a resource a little thing may become. There are so many playthings in the world, no need is left unsupplied. When one is too ill to think and too weak to look, there are fleeting glimpses through half-shut lids of blue sky beyond one's windows of a drifting cloud, a flash of wings or the waving of boughs in the wind. beautiful pictures which return uncalled for to float above that sea of pain wherein one rocks
and to steady one with a half-consciousness of an upper world of beauty and peace, real though beyond one's reach. And when one can think a little, oh so many things, one cannot possibly be cut off from life if one's heart be in it. It isn't the move of one's body that counts, but the clasping of life with the heart. We really live to the exact extent we care, and so find the interest with which every atom and phase of life is stored.
He brought an eye for all he saw. Was ever anything more beautiful said of anyone than that? and that is what I pray for, for the seeing I, that whether my body be well or ill, I may enter in at the open doors which swing wide on every hand and see and love and rejoice, understanding where I may and happy where I may not, to watch, to learn, to wonder like a child. January 15th. The real freedom of life is measured not by one's liberty to do as one likes,
but by the things one can afford to do without. And there is no poverty in such freedom. It is through the enrichment of the inner life that one's resources grow great enough to enable one to dispense with the outward things once so necessary. End of chapter 4
