Ethel Cook Eliot

“ No, Helma is my only mother, and Ivra is my comrade. And still I want to leave them,—and go on and away over there. It is very funny."
"No," said Wild Star. "It isn't funny. You are a growing Earth Child, not a fairy. It is your own kind calling you. It is the music of your human life."
"I don't know what you mean," said Eric.
"It is like this: you know when you begin to sing a song, you go on and on to the end without thinking about it at all. It is the theme that carries you. Well, a human life is made like a song,—it carries itself along. You do not stop to think why. ”

“ It was only for an instant, and might have been illusion caused by too much white sunlight, but to him she was a spirit dancing on winter air—as her father would see her, were he here in the Weyman dining room instead of way off in that dream loggia with the dream butterflies over the dream sea. Her body seemed elongated, taller with its upward lift. She was reaching out her arms, not toward the snowy air and the sky, however, but simply to take the coat and pocketbook which Hugh had picked up for her from the chair where she had tossed them before breakfast in readiness for train-catching. ”

“ But if Teresa bore it, I guess you can bear hearing it, Doctor Pryne. Shall I tell you?”
“Yes,” Lewis urged. “I want to hear,” but added with quick compunction, “if it doesn’t hurt you too much, Petra,”—and was utterly astonished by the devastating look Petra gave him. But her scorn was for herself.
“Hurt me too much!” she exclaimed. “I only wish it could hurt me! Really hurt me! It is too terrible that one person had to bear it all alone. And Teresa, of all people! When she is so happy, so jolly—and loves God more than all the rest of the people I know put together love Him! ”

“ Now these World Stories of Helma's were wonderful stories, but all true. They began way back when the Earth was young. There were stories about the Earth itself, how it hung in space and turned, making day and night. When the strange, great animals that by-and-by appeared on the Earth and have since gone from it first came into the stories, and then, later, the floods and glaciers, and at last the first man,—any child might have listened with delight and wonder. Ivra had listened so ever since she was a tiny girl, old enough to understand at all. ”

“ But what was it Petra had said to McCloud that day of the miracle? Lewis knew it by heart, it was often in his mind; yet now he was groping for it confusedly! He put his head into his hands. Was this it?—“Love is the word. You must say that. Try to say ‘I love.’”
And McCloud had said it—while the shackles of hate and rebellion fell away and left him a free man—free in love. If Lewis’ shackles could only fall, as had Neil’s! If he could only love Petra and not hate her, then he would be able to bear, perhaps, not having her. And hatred of Petra seemed to make him hate everything else. ”

“ He was a long-legged boy, with a mop of tousled black hair, clever eyes, and an ambiguous, crooked smile. Very white teeth. His tie, a brilliant orange ribbon, and his teeth wavered before Ariel’s shaky vision, and then she was turned to face Prescott Enderly.
The young celebrity was quickly effervescent. In the instant of introduction he gave everything to Ariel Clare, all the color and sparkle of his personality. He had liked the back of her green frock and the way her hair—pale hair, of no color at all by lamplight—curled in at the back of her neck, before she was turned to him. ”

“ I’m no judge of painting. Know next to nothing about it. It will be merely a matter of personal taste with me, and of no account whatever as criticism. But then no individual’s word can make a final judgment. Not Joan’s certainly. Not even Michael Schwankovsky’s. Not yours or mine, or your father’s. Least of all your father’s, Ariel. No one knows anything about his own creative work—whether it’s good or bad—any more than the soul knows its own state. ”

“ Eric followed Ivra, and saw a great black moth-like thing poised in air by the tree's top. But it was hollowed like a boat and a shadowy woman was standing upright in it. A dark cloak covered her, but the hood had fallen back, and her face in the starlight was very beautiful and very young, younger even than Helma's, whose face Eric had thought all that day too young and glad to be a mother's. How could this be the Tree Man's mother, he wondered,—the Tree Girl's grandmother! Then he saw that her hair was white, whiter than all the snow that lay in the forest. ”

“ Clare said, after a minute, “I see what you think! If only you were right! How happy that would make me, Doctor! But life isn’t like that. Life makes us suffer. What I am so tortured by now is the fear that in my blundering I may not only have failed to help Dick, but I may have involved Petra in something amounting almost to tragedy for her. If she cares for him, as she seems to lately—if she has given up Neil for Dick, and Dick fails her—all our hearts may break in the end. ”

“ Hugh realized that he had never in his life been vital to any other living soul in precisely the way Ariel made him feel that he was vital to her. If Joan had wanted to marry him ten years ago, instead of Nevin, and Persis and Nicky were his and hers, he might have toward those children something of this same consoling sense of obligation. It was what his life had missed even more than it had missed intimate companionship with the woman he loved. And now, at last, he and Joan were sharing a living, lovely, common interest—Ariel’s good. ”

“ Petra put her hand up to her mouth. It was dry and her tongue was dry.
Janet said “You are stark crazy—or else you are a plain fool. It isn’t just the sneakiness of it—reading private records. It’s the cruelty. It’s violating another person’s rights to his own secrets. Petra, how could you? Are you crazy?”
She must be. Petra thought so herself now. It was worse than reading other people’s letters, reading a doctor’s records of cases. Any one who wasn’t crazy would know that. Even young children knew better than to open drawers in other people’s houses. ”

“ Eric followed Ivra, who knew all the ways in the forest, to the spot where Wild Star was most likely to be, if he was to be found at all on such a windy, perfect day. They ran earnestly, never slackening to skip or play. And soon they came in sight of some giant cedar trees near the edge of the forest. There were several Wind Creatures standing there, laughing in shrill, glad voices, pointing with their arms, and flapping their purple wings. Wind Creatures are growing-up boys and girls with fairy-hearts and strong, never-tiring purple wings, remember. ”

“ And Joan’s vanity, I’ve noticed, has become herself. It’s absorbed the soul she was born with. I don’t know which is more stupid: to think you’re a great painter when you aren’t even a little artist—or to think you are a real person, a worthy human being, when you are nothing but a mass of festering vanity. If you really want Hugh to marry that, and wake up too late, or never wake up at all, and so prove himself an imbecile—”
But Hortense would not listen to more. She had pushed back her chair and was at the door. “You’re almost horrifying, Mother Weyman! Joan is a friend of mine. ”

“ Over its head, a dark crucifix, tarnished silver, and about a foot high, was nailed against a supporting post.
Not a breath of change seemed to have passed over Teresa since that October day four years ago, when she had opened the door for Lewis in the Farwells’ Cambridge 305 apartment. She was fresh and vivid, with smiles rippling to light in brown-gold eyes, and an unselfish, lovely mouth, molded by gaiety and humor. And her voice, exactly as Lewis had remembered it through the years, bore out the smile in her eyes. Yes, Teresa was still all of one piece—spirit and body one. ”

“ Wild Thyme ran to her and laid her bushy head against her breast. For Wild Thyme only of all the Forest People loved her without awe. The Tree Mother put her hand on Wild Thyme's head and stood to watch the dancing. Her robe gleamed like frost, and her hair was a pool of light above her head.
Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrummmmmmmmm.
Wild Thyme jumped back into the dance and the Tree Mother stood alone. But although she stood as still as a moonbeam under the tree, she made Eric think of dancing more than all the others put together. It was her eyes. ”

“ For once and at last he was articulate, poor darling. Complacency, almost amounting to beatitude, reëstablished itself in her psyche. But it was a beatitude just tainted, curdled rather, with scorn. Joan regretted the curdle. But it was inevitable. For it is a law of the heart, she realized, that love given so completely as Hugh’s was given, with nothing reserved, can never have its like in return. “And it’s a pity,” she thought a little bitterly. “For if I could be absolutely sure of a love like Hugh’s, and return it, it would be bliss. The trouble is, one can’t. It’s against nature.” ”

“ If Clare were just any silly woman, ‘out for the men,’ you’d laugh at her and find her, possibly, rather touchingly human. You might even like her. But it’s precisely because she isn’t a silly, superficial creature that the cruelty and ugliness in her seems such wretched cruelty, such wretched ugliness. She is an exquisite person—has exquisite perceptions, anyway. There’s only that one unpleasant spot, her vanity in the admiration she excites in every one around her. ”

“ But the Witch had stopped her dancing by the bird cage in the middle of the room, and her little hands were between the bars stroking the bright bird-breast. She was saying, "Sing for us, bird. Sing your nicest song for us. Little Eric wants to hear it."
The bird began to beat its wings and breast against the bars. Again and again its bright breast struck the door. But it did not fly open.
"It does not want to sing," laughed the Beautiful Wicked Witch; "but it must. Sing, bird, sing! It does you no good to struggle. You can't get away. Sing, sing!" ”

“ Hugh had not realized before that Schwankovsky could play,—and play like this! The big man was looking beyond Ariel, as if he himself saw the clouds, the beach, felt the rhythms of earth, sky and water, that were pouring through his music. Hugh could not go forward. He dared not break into the Forces of Beauty which even he, Philistine that he was, could feel gathering in that room. ”

“ Petra had interrupted Clare. Her anger had now risen to the level of her astonishment. “It’s absolutely unfair,” she cried, her young face and her young voice ablaze with wrath. “It is a salary you are cutting, Clare Otis-Farwell! Not a mere allowance. Does Doctor Pryne know that? And you do it casually, like this, at his mere suggestion. I earn every penny of it.”
“What in heaven’s name do you mean?” For that instant Clare forgot Lewis as audience. Her expression was simply dumbfounded, with for once nothing subtle about it. “You earn two thousand dollars a year! ”

“ Ivra's hair had gone unbrushed for two days. Things like that are apt to slip when one's mother is away. So her little pigtails were no longer smooth and glossy, but frowsy and loose, and the rest of her hair was ruffled until it looked something like the Bird Fairies' soft plumage. Eric's head, too, was shaggier than ever, and a smudge from firebuilding had darkened one of his cheeks since the morning before. They had not bathed in the "bird bath" since Helma had gone away. They never seemed to have time, or else they were too sleepy. ”

“ She would show him that Petra had no possible chance of being her, Clare Farwell’s, rival! After long weeks of fearing it, to-night Clare was faced with the fact that this Doctor Lewis Pryne was not to increase her roll of wonderful friendships. But one slight gratification she would yet wrest from the humiliating situation: the man might himself distrust, even dislike her; but he should see that Dick Wilder was still her slave. ”

“ Persis, Nicky, their nurse, Alice, and Ariel Clare were all up on the wall, their legs swinging over on the Wild Acres side, their faces wildwood-tangleward, talking. Much overheard talk sounds like monkey chatter, when the words are indistinguishable, but not this of the two girls and the two children. With such inflections, such deliberate tranquillity, the gods might converse on Olympus. Joan drew nearer the beatitude of intercourse, walking softly on moist spring ground, ears beginning to catch the words. ”

“ But after a little he knew it was not Helma's little forest house that was to go swinging away into space and adventure,—it was himself. And suddenly he wanted to go then,—to the sea and over and beyond. He called the news in to Helma and Ivra, who were still within doors. Helma came swiftly out to him.
"The trees are beckoning again, mother," he cried. "The way they did a year ago when I first came here. Now it is just as Wild Star said. The music is beginning to go on. There's magic out to-day. Oh, what made Wild Star know so much?" ”

“ She says that passionate friendship is actually more involving than passionate love. Because it absorbs and colors the imagination, you see. If we were lovers, she says—as the world understands the phrase, you know—why, we mightn’t mean nearly so much to each other as we do with things as they are with us. But she was ready to sacrifice this passionate friendship for my sake. She was afraid I might suffer too much, if it continued. You mustn’t think I am crazily conceited, Lewis, when I tell you that not seeing me any more would have meant sacrifice to Clare. ”

“ But what he’s concentrating on is not the harmony in his own psyche, but to storm the harmony in hers. He isn’t fit for love—and I’m not going to pity Hugh now any more than I pity myself, please God. Neither of us is fit to be loved, or we would be.”
But then she noticed Ariel’s face, and was silenced as if by a thunder-clap, although Ariel’s face was as quiet as a stone and shut like a stone. Still, Anne was awed or frightened—she didn’t know which—into sudden silence. ”