The Forerunner Part 103

THE EARTH'S ENTAIL

No matter how we cultivate the land, Taming the forest and the prairie free; No matter how we irrigate the sand, Making the desert blossom at command, We must always leave the borders of the sea; The immeasureable reaches Of the windy wave-wet beaches, The million-mile-long margin of the sea.

No matter how the engineers may toil, Nature's barriers and bulwarks to defy; No matter how we excavate and spoil, De-forest and denude and waste the soil, We must always leave the mountains looming high; No human effort changes, The horizon-rolling ranges Where the high hills heave and shoulder to the sky.

When a child may wander safely, east or west, When the peaceful nations gossip and agree.

When our homes are set in gardens all at rest, And happy lives are long in work loved best, We can leave our labor and go free; Free to go and stand alone in, Free for each to find his own in.

In the everlasting mountains and the sea.

THE COTTAGETTE

"Why not?" said Mr. Mathews "It is far too small for a house, too pretty for a hut, too--unusual--for a cottage."

"Cottagette, by all means," said Lois, seating herself on a porch chair.

"But it is larger than it looks, Mr. Mathews. How do you like it, Malda?"

I was delighted with it. More than delighted. Here this tiny sh.e.l.l of fresh unpainted wood peeped out from under the trees, the only house in sight except the distant white specks on far off farms, and the little wandering village in the river-threaded valley. It sat right on the turf,--no road, no path even, and the dark woods shadowed the back windows.

"How about meals?" asked Lois.

"Not two minutes walk," he a.s.sured her, and showed us a little furtive path between the trees to the place where meals were furnished.

We discussed and examined and exclaimed, Lois holding her pongee skirts close about her--she needn't have been so careful, there wasn't a speck of dust,--and presently decided to take it.

Never did I know the real joy and peace of living, before that blessed summer at "High Court." It was a mountain place, easy enough to get to, but strangely big and still and far away when you were there.

The working basis of the establishment was an eccentric woman named Caswell, a sort of musical enthusiast, who had a summer school of music and the "higher things." Malicious persons, not able to obtain accommodations there, called the place "High C."

I liked the music very well, and kept my thoughts to myself, both high and low, but "The Cottagette" I loved unreservedly. It was so little and new and clean, smelling only of its fresh-planed boards--they hadn't even stained it.

There was one big room and two little ones in the tiny thing, though from the outside you wouldn't have believed it, it looked so small; but small as it was it harbored a miracle--a real bathroom with water piped from mountain springs. Our windows opened into the green shadiness, the soft brownness, the bird-inhabited quiet flower-starred woods. But in front we looked across whole counties--over a far-off river-into another state. Off and down and away--it was like sitting on the roof of something--something very big.

The gra.s.s swept up to the door-step, to the walls--only it wasn't just gra.s.s of course, but such a procession of flowers as I had never imagined could grow in one place.

You had to go quite a way through the meadow, wearing your own narrow faintly marked streak in the gra.s.s, to reach the town-connecting road below. But in the woods was a little path, clear and wide, by which we went to meals.

For we ate with the highly thoughtful musicians, and highly musical thinkers, in their central boarding-house nearby. They didn't call it a boarding-house, which is neither high nor musical; they called it "The Calceolaria." There was plenty of that growing about, and I didn't mind what they called it so long as the food was good--which it was, and the prices reasonable--which they were.

The people were extremely interesting--some of them at least; and all of them were better than the average of summer boarders.

But if there hadn't been any interesting ones it didn't matter while Ford Mathews was there. He was a newspaper man, or rather an ex-newspaper man, then becoming a writer for magazines, with books ahead.

He had friends at High Court--he liked music--he liked the place--and he liked us. Lois liked him too, as was quite natural. I'm sure I did.

He used to come up evenings and sit on the porch and talk.

He came daytimes and went on long walks with us. He established his workshop in a most attractive little cave not far beyond far beyond us--the country there is full of rocky ledges and hollows, and sometimes asked us over to an afternoon tea, made on a gipsy fire.

Lois was a good deal older than I, but not really old at all, and she didn't look her thirty-five by ten years. I never blamed her for not mentioning it, and I wouldn't have done so, myself, on any account. But I felt that together we made a safe and reasonable household. She played beautifully, and there was a piano in our big room. There were pianos in several other little cottages about--but too far off for any jar of sound. When the wind was right we caught little wafts of music now and then; but mostly it was still--blessedly still, about us. And yet that Calceolaria was only two minutes off--and with raincoats and rubbers we never minded going to it.

We saw a good deal of Ford and I got interested in him, I couldn't help it. He was big. Not extra big in pounds and inches, but a man with big view and a grip--with purpose and real power. He was going to do things. I thought he was doing them now, but he didn't--this was all like cutting steps in the ice-wall, he said. It had to be done, but the road was long ahead. And he took an interest in my work too, which is unusual for a literary man.

Mine wasn't much. I did embroidery and made designs.

It is such pretty work! I like to draw from flowers and leaves and things about me; conventionalize them sometimes, and sometimes paint them just as they are,--in soft silk st.i.tches.

All about up here were the lovely small things I needed; and not only these, but the lovely big things that make one feel so strong and able to do beautiful work.

Here was the friend I lived so happily with, and all this fairy land of sun and shadow, the free immensity of our view, and the dainty comfort of the Cottagette. We never had to think of ordinary things till the soft musical thrill of the j.a.panese gong stole through the trees, and we trotted off to the Calceolaria.

I think Lois knew before I did.

We were old friends and trusted each other, and she had had experience too.

"Malda," she said, "let us face this thing and be rational." It was a strange thing that Lois should be so rational and yet so musical--but she was, and that was one reason I liked her so much.

"You are beginning to love Ford Mathews--do you know it?"

I said yes, I thought I was.

"Does he love you?"

That I couldn't say. "It is early yet," I told her. "He is a man, he is about thirty I believe, he has seen more of life and probably loved before--it may be nothing more than friendliness with him."

"Do you think it would be a good marriage?" she asked. We had often talked of love and marriage, and Lois had helped me to form my views--hers were very clear and strong.

"Why yes--if he loves me," I said. "He has told me quite a bit about his family, good western farming people, real Americans. He is strong and well--you can read clean living in his eyes and mouth." Ford's eyes were as clear as a girl's, the whites of them were clear. Most men's eyes, when you look at them critically, are not like that. They may look at you very expressively, but when you look at them, just as features, they are not very nice.

I liked his looks, but I liked him better.

So I told her that as far as I knew it would be a good marriage--if it was one.

"How much do you love him?" she asked.

That I couldn't quite tell,--it was a good deal,--but I didn't think it would kill me to lose him.

"Do you love him enough to do something to win him--to really put yourself out somewhat for that purpose?"

"Why--yes--I think I do. If it was something I approved of. What do you mean?"

Then Lois unfolded her plan. She had been married,--unhappily married, in her youth; that was all over and done with years ago; she had told me about it long since; and she said she did not regret the pain and loss because it had given her experience. She had her maiden name again--and freedom. She was so fond of me she wanted to give me the benefit of her experience--without the pain.

"Men like music," said Lois; "they like sensible talk; they like beauty of course, and all that,--"