Zona Gale

“ Across the adjoining lawn Nicholas could see in the moonlight the moving figure of the big deacon, a Light Gown or two attending. A sudden surprising sense of safety from them overswept the boy. What if they did come that way! What, he even thought, if those people in the house were to come by? Somehow, the little hollow of dark in which he had always walked in the midst of light was now as light as the rest of the world, and he was not afraid. And all this because Elfa did not stir in his arms, but was still, as if they were her harbor. And then Nicholas knew what they both meant. ”

“ But when Nicholas would have passed her it was as if the immemorial loneliness and the seeking of forgotten men innumerable stirred within him in the ache of his heart, in the mere desperate wish to go to somebody, to be with somebody, to have somebody by the hand. ”

“ As for Nicholas, when he went by that house he became another being. This night—the first time that he had ever entered her gate—the protection of the twilight alone kept him from running away. Once under the poplars he did not know what way to look. To seem to look straight along the road was unnatural. To seem to look out across the opposite fields was hypocrisy. To look at her house was unthinkable. So, as he went in at the gate and up the aster-bordered walk, he examined the back of his hand—near, and then a little farther away. ”

“ How easy, Nicholas thought piteously, those people in her house all found it to act the way they wanted to! Their hands must be like her hands. ...
He got through the garden and to the side gate. And now the old loneliness was twofold upon him because he had known what it is to reach from the dark toward the light; yet when he saw that at the gate some one was standing, he halted in his old impulse to be on guard, hunted by the fear that this would be somebody alien to him. Then he saw that it was no one from another star, but Elfa. ”

“ Then the little maid had gone, and the New Lady, sipping her own glass, was talking to him.
"You were lying on the grass that day," she said, "as if you understood grass. Not many do understand about grass, and almost nobody understands the country. People say, 'Come, let us go into the country,' and when we get there is it the country they want at all? No, it is the country sports, the country home, everything but the real country. They play match games. They make expeditions, climb things in a stated time, put in a day at a stated place. ”

“ Places to which outstretched hands never penetrate? A great understanding and wistfulness possessed him and he burst out in an effort to express it.
"You're a funny girl," he said.
She flushed, and suddenly lifted one hand and looked at it. Nicholas watched her now intently. She studied the back of her hand, turned it, and sat absorbedly examining her little thumb. And Nicholas felt a sudden sense of understanding, of gladness that he understood. As he felt when he was afraid and wretched, so Elfa was feeling now. ”

“ The little maid Elfa came showing them through the house, in the pleasant custom of the village. And when the New Lady, with pretty, expected murmurings, rose to meet them, Nicholas got to his feet confronting the crisis of saying good-by, and the moment closed upon him like a vise. He heard his voice falter among the other voices, he saw himself under the necessity to take her hand and the deacon's hand, and the hands, so to speak, of the Three Light Gowns ”

“ That, Nicholas saw, was true enough. Even he had been mortified because he had taken her hand.
"Once," Elfa said, "I fed a woman by the backdoor. An' when she went she took a-hold o' my hand, thankful. An' then you done it too—like it was a mistake. That's all, since I worked out. I don't know folks outside much, only some that don't shake hands, 'count o' seemin' ashamed to."
"I know," said Nicholas.
"Sometimes," she went on, "folks come here an' walk in to see her, an' they don't shake. Ain't it funny—when folks can an' don't? ”

“ Elfa said.
Between the New Lady's house and the big, obvious deacon's lawn the boy stood, silent, his arms about the girl. So this was the way the world is, people bound, together, needing one another, wanting one another, stretching out their hands. ...
"Why, it was you I wanted!" Nicholas said, wonderingly. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1938, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 84 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”