Purple Springs - Nellie L. McClung
"Yes, dear," she said, "come right in--I want you--I'm lonesome--and I
like little boys like you."
His eyes seemed to grow more luminous and wistful.
"I can't come in," he said. "I can't come into the school at all--not
the least little bit--I have an ungovernable temper."
"I'm not afraid," said Pearl gravely, "I am very brave that way, and
don't mind at all. Who says you have?"
"The trustees," he said and his voice began to quiver. "They sent
mother a letter about me."
"O, I know you now, James," said Pearl, "come in--I want to talk to
you. I was going to see you just as soon as I got settled."
Cautiously he entered; the out-door wildness was in his graceful
movements. He stooped a few feet away from her and said again:
"Please, teacher."
Pearl smiled back, reassuringly, and his eyes responded.
"Did you get a place yet?" he asked eagerly.
"No, I didn't," she answered. She was going to tell him that she would
not need a place, for she was going away, but something stopped her.
Somehow she could not dim the radiance of those eager eyes.
"Teacher!" he cried coming nearer, "would you come and live with us?
My mother is just sweet, and she would like to have you. She is away
today, to Millford, and won't be home till eight o'clock. I stayed at
home because I wanted to see you. My mother watched you going to the
houses--we can see all of them from our house--and every time you
came away from them--she was glad. We have a spy-glass, and we could
see--that's how we knew how nice you were, teacher"--he was almost
near enough to touch her now. "You can have my bed if you will come."
Pearl wanted to draw him to her and kiss the fear forever from his
face, but she was still afraid he might vanish if she touched him.
"My mother thinks you are nice," he said softly. "We saw you patting
Cowan's dog and walking home with the children. One day we saw you
walking home with Edgar Zinc. He held your hand--and my mother got to
thinking that it might have been me that you had by the hand, and
she cried that day, and couldn't tell why. It wasn't because she was
lonely--because she never is lonely. How could she be when she has me?
She tells me every day she is not lonely. But we'd like fine to have
you live with us, teacher, because you're nice."
Pearl's arm was around him now, and he let her draw him over to her.
"Tell me all about yourself," she said, with a curious tugging at her
heart.
"We're orphans," he said simply, "mother and I--that means our people
are dead. We had no people, only just our daddy. We didn't need any
people only him, and he's dead. And then we had Mr. Bowen--and he's
dead. Don't it beat all how people die? Are you an orphan?"
Pearl shook her head.
James continued: "We're waiting here until I get bigger and mother
gets enough money--and then we're going back. It's lovely to be going
back. This isn't the real Purple Springs--we just called it that for
fun, and because we love the name. It makes us happier when we say it.
It reminds us. Mother will tell you if you live with us."
"At night we light the fire and watch it crackling, and I sit on
mother's knee. Ain't I a big boy to sit on a lady's knee?--and she
tells me. At Purple Springs there's pansies as big as plates--mother
will draw them for you--and the rocks are always warm, and the streams
are boiling hot, and nobody is ever sick there or tired. Daddy
wouldn't have died if we'd stayed there. But there's things in life no
one understands. We'll never leave when we go back."
The boy rambled on, his eyes shining with a great excitement. Pearl
thought she was listening to the fanciful tales with which a lonely
woman beguiled the weary hours for her little son It was a weirdly
extravagant fairy story, and yet it fascinated Pearl in spite of it's
unlikeness to truth. It had all the phantasy of a midsummer night's
dream.
The boy seemed to answer her thoughts.
"Ain't it great to have something lovely to dream over, teacher? I bet
you've got sweet dreams, too. Mother says that what kills people's
souls is when they have no purple springs in their lives. She says
she's sorry for lots of people They live and walk around, but their
souls are dead, because their springs have dried up."
Pearl drew him closer to her. He was so young--and yet so old--so
happy, and yet so lonely. She wanted to give him back a careless,
happy, irresponsible childhood, full of frolicking fun and mischief,
without care or serious thought. She longed to see him grubby-fisted
bare-footed, tousle-haired, shouting and wrestling with her young
tykes of brothers. It was not natural or happy to see a child so
elfin, so remote, so conscious of the world's sorrows.
"Will you come with me now, teacher?" he asked eagerly.
Pearl could not resist the appeal. The sun hung low in an amber haze
as they left the school and took the unfrequented road to the brown
house on the hill--the house of mystery.
The air was full of the drowsy sounds of evening; cattle returning
after their day's freedom in the fields, cow-bells tinkling
contentedly. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked; and on the gentle
breeze came the song of a hermit thrush, with an undertone of cooing
pigeons. The acrid smell of burning leaves was in the air.
The river valley ran into the sunset with its bold scrub-covered
banks, on the high shoulder of which the railway cut made a deep welt,
purple now with evening. Every day the westbound train, with its gray
smoke spume laid back on its neck like a mane, slid swiftly around the
base of the hill until the turn in the river made it appear to go into
a tunnel, for the opposite bank obscured it from view. It re-appeared
again, a mile farther west, and its smoke could be followed by the eye
for many miles as it made its way to the city. This year it was the
Government's promise that the river would be bridged at Purple Springs
and the road made more direct.
"Mother says no one could be lonely when they can see the trains,"
said James Gray. "Mother just loves the trains--they whistle to us
every day. They would stop and talk to us only they're in such a
hurry."
When her young escort led Pearl Watson into the living-room she gave
an exclamation of delight. A low ceiling, with weathered beams; a
floor covered with bright-colored, hand-made rugs, bookcases
filled with books, a few pictures on the wall, and many pieces of
artistically constructed furniture.
"Mother makes these in the winter, she and I. We work all evening,
and then we make toast at the fireplace and play the phonograph and
pretend we have visitors. Ever since we knew you were coming you've
been our visitor, and now tonight I'll hide you, and mother will think
I'm just pretending, and then you'll come out, and mother will think
she's dreaming again."
Pearl helped her young friend to milk the two fine cows that came up
to the bars expectantly, after which the evening meal was prepared,
and Pearl was amazed at the deft manner in which the boy set about his
work. He told her more about calories and food values and balanced
meals than the Domestic Science Department at the Normal School had
taught her.
"How do you know all this?" she asked him in surprise.
"Mother reads it in books and tells me. Mother learns everything
first, and tells me--she is determined," said the boy gravely, "that
I will have just as good a chance as other children. She says if
she ever did anything that wasn't right, and which made it hard for
me--she'll make it up. Mother says God is often up against it with
people, too. He has to let things happen to them--bad things--but He
can always make it up to them--and He will! Do you think that too,
teacher?"
"I am sure of it," said Pearl, with a catch in her throat and a sudden
chill of doubt. Were there some things which even God could not make
up to us?
The fireplace was laid with red willow wood, and when everything was
ready, and the hour had come when Mrs. Gray was expected home, Pearl
and James waited in the big chair before the fire, which darted
tongues of purple flame and gave a grateful heat, for the evening was
chilly. They did not light the lamp at all, for the light from the
fire threw a warm glow over the room.
A great peace seemed to have come to Pearl's heart. The neighbors of
Purple Springs, with their inhospitable hearts, seemed far away and
unreal. That thought in some occult way came to her with comforting
power from the spirit which dwelt in this home.
For three years no friendly foot had come to this threshold, no one
had directed a friendly thought to the woman who lived here, nor to
the child; yet woman and child had lived on happily in spite of this,
and now to Pearl, on whom the taboo of the neighborhood had also
fallen, there came the peace of mind which could set quietly at
defiance the opinion of the little world which surrounded her.
So intent were Pearl and James on the story that Pearl was telling
they did not hear the buggy, which drove up to the house. Mrs. Gray
got out and took out her parcels at the front door. The leaping flames
from the fire-place in the pretty room, made a picture she loved well.
It was so significant of home--and it is those who have not always had
a home who love it best. She stopped to watch the light as it danced
on the shelves of books and the brightly colored hangings and rugs.
Seeing Pearl in the big chair, with her arm around the boy, Annie
Gray's heart gave a leap of rapture. Her boy had a companion--a human
comrade other than herself. It had come at last! The dream had come
true! She watched Pearl, fascinated, fearful. Was it a dream, or was
there really a human being, and such a lovely one, a guest at her
fireside?
With a quick movement she flung open the door James ran to his mother
with a welcoming shout. Then Pearl stood up, and the two women shook
hands without a word. They looked long into each other's eyes; then
with a quick impulse, and a sudden illumination, Pearl put her arms
around the older woman and kissed her.
Annie Gray held her away from her, so she could look at her again.
Then with a laugh that was half a sob, she said:
"Prayers--are--sometimes--answered," and without any warning,
surprising herself even more than she did the others--she began to
cry. Three years is a long time.
CHAPTER XIX
THE END OF A LONELY ROAD
When Pearl opened her eyes the next morning it was with a delicious
sense of well-being, which increased as she looked about her. It may
have been the satiny smoothness of the sheets, the silk eiderdown
quilt, with its plumy yellow chrysanthemums, the pale yellow scrim
curtains, across whose lower borders young brown ducks followed each
other in stately procession; the home-made table with its gray linen
runner, across which a few larger ducks paraded, and which held a
large lamp, with a well-flounced shade; the soft buff walls, with
their border of yellow autumn woods, sun-sweet and cool, with
leaf-strewn paths that would be springy to walk on. It may have been
these, for Pearl's heart could easily be set tingling by a flash of
color that pleased her. But there is no doubt the room had a presence,
a strong, buoyant, cheerful presence. It had been furnished to defy
loneliness. Who could be lonely looking down at a thick plushy rug of
woolly white sheep, shading into yellow, lying on the very greenest of
grass, beside a whimsical little twisting stream that you were just
sure had speckled trout in it, darting over its gravelly bottom, if
your eyes were only quick enough to catch the flash of them; and who
wouldn't be glad to wash in a basin that was just lined with yellow
roses, with a few of them falling out over the sides; and who wouldn't
accept the gift of a towel from a hospitable oak hand, which held out
a whole bouquet of them--one on each finger; towels with all sorts of
edgings and insertions and baskets of flowers and monograms on them
just begging you to take your choice. And if anything else were needed
to keep the heart from dull gray loneliness, or ugly black fear, on
the wall over the bed was a big gilt-framed picture of an amber-eyed,
white-collared, blessed collie dog, with the faintest showing of his
red tongue, big and strong and faithful, just to remind you that
though changes befall and friends betray and hopes grow cold,
faithfulness and affection have not entirely vanished from the earth.
Pearl's sense of freedom, of power, of comfort, seemed to increase as
she lay watching the spot of sunshine which fell on the rug with its
flock of sheep and seemed to bring them alive. The whole room seemed
to fit around her, the ceiling bent over her like a kind face,
the walls, pictures, and furniture were like a group of friends
encouraging her, inspiring her, soothing her.
Pearl searched her mind for a word to describe it. "It feels
like--Saturday--" she said at last, "--freedom, rest, plans,
ambitions--it has them all, and it has something deeper still in
it--it is like a section of a tree, in which history can be read,
storms and winds and sunshine," for Pearl knew instinctively that it
was a tower-room that Annie Gray had made for an armor for her soul,
so it would not be pierced by the injustice and unkindness of the
world.
"They do not understand," Pearl said again, "that's all--they do not
mean to be so horrid to her--it's queer how badly people can treat
each other and their conscience let them get away with it. Even if
Mrs. Gray had been all they said, she had not done any wrong to
them--why should they feel called upon to punish her? Well, I can tell
them a few things now."
A fire burned in the fireplace, and the breakfast-table was set in
front of it. Mrs. Gray, in an attractive mauve house-gown, came in
from the kitchen. She was a tall woman, with steel gray eyes, with
pebblings of green--the eyes of courage and high resolve. Her features
were classical in their regularity, and reminded Pearl of the faces in
her history reproduced from the Greek coins, lacking only the laurel
wreath. Her hair was beginning to turn gray, and showed a streak at
each side, over her temples. A big black braid was rolled around her
perfectly round head; a large green jade brooch, with a braided silver
edge, fastened her dress. Her hands were brown and hard, but long,
shapely and capable looking.
The boy was sleeping late, so Pearl and her hostess ate their
breakfast alone.
"Will you let me stay with you, Mrs. Gray," Pearl asked, when
breakfast was over. "I will make my own bed, keep my things tidy, try
not to spill my tea. I will wipe my feet, close the screen door, and
get up for breakfast."
Mrs. Gray looked across the table, with her dear eyes fastened on her
guest. Suddenly they began to grow dim with tears.
"Pearl," she said, laughing, "I don't know what there is about you
that makes me want to cry. I've gone through some rough places in life
without a tear, but you seem to have a way all your own to start me
off."
"But I don't hurt you, do I?" Pearl asked, in distress. "Surely I
don't--I wouldn't do that for the world."
"Not a bit of it," laughed her hostess, as she wiped her eyes, and
then, blinking hard to clear away the last traces of grief, she said:
"Pearl, before you come to board with me you should know something
about me; you have no doubt heard some strange things."
Pearl did not deny it.
"And you should know the whole story, and then judge for yourself
whether you consider I am a fit person to live with."
"But I do already," said Pearl. "I consider you a very proper and
delightful person to live with. I don't want to know a thing about
you unless you care to tell me. You don't know anything about me
either--we both have to take a chance--and I am willing if you are."
"But there will be an insurrection in the neighborhood. They won't let
you, Pearl. They can't forgive me for coming here without reference or
character, and with a child, too."
"Well, he's a pretty fine child," said Pearl, "and, I should say, a
sort of certificate for his mother."
"Well, no matter how fine a child he is--no matter what care a mother
has taken in his training--nothing can atone, in the eyes of society
for the failure of conforming to some of their laws. Society's laws,
not God's laws. Society is no friend to women, Pearl."
"But it is just because people do not think," said Pearl, "They have
made certain laws--and women have not made any protest, so the men
think they are all right."
"And do you know why, Pearl?" she asked. "Women who are caught in the
tangle of these laws, as I was, cannot say a word--their lips
are dumb. The others won't say a word for fear of spoiling their
matrimonial market. The worst thing that can be said of a woman is
that she's queer and strong-minded--and defies custom. If you want to
be happy, Pearl, be self-centered, virtuous, obey the law, and care
nothing for others."
"You don't mean that," said Pearl. "You've been hard hit some way I
do not want to know until you want to tell me. But I am going to stay
with you if you will keep me. I am determined to stay."
Annie Gray's steely eyes clouded over again, like a sun-kissed lake
when a cloud passes over it. They grew deeper, grayer, and of misty
tenderness.
"You are doing something for me, Pearl, that I thought could never be
done; you are restoring my faith. Remember, I have not been as unhappy
as you may think. I had my happiness--that's more than some women can
say. I have had the rapture, the blessedness of love--I've had
it all--the rapture of holding and the agony of loss--I'm only
thirty-one, but I've lived a thousand years. But, Pearl, you've done
something for me already; you have set my feet again on something
solid, and I am a different woman from yesterday. Some day I'll tell
you a strange story until then, you'll trust me?"
"Until then--and far beyond it--forever," said Pearl. "I'll trust
you--I have an idea you and I are going to stick together for a long
time."
Pearl went back to the school and found her letter of acceptance in
the desk. She tore it up and wrote another, thanking the department
for their kindness in offering her such a splendid position, but
explaining that she had decided to stay at the school at Purple
Springs. She made her decision without any difficulty. There was a
deep conviction that the threads of destiny were weaving together her
life and Annie Gray's, and she knew, from some hidden source in
her soul, that she must stand by. What she could do, was vague and
unformed in her mind, but she knew it would be revealed to her.
Pearl, child of the prairie, never could think as clearly when her
vision was bounded by walls. She had to have blue distance--the great,
long look that swept away the little petty, trifling, hampering
things, which so slavishly dominate our lives, if we will let them. So
she took her way to a little lake behind the school, where with the
school axe she had already made a seat for herself under two big
poplar trees, and cut the lower branches of some of the smaller ones,
giving them a neat and tidy appearance, like well-gartered children
dressed for a picnic.
There were a few white birches mixed with the poplars, so delicately
formed and dainty in their slender branches and lacy leaves, they
looked like nice little girls with flowing hair, coming down to bathe
in the blue lake, timidly trying out the water with their white feet.
The trees formed a semi-circle around the east side of the lake,
leaving one side open to view, and she could see the prairie falling
away to the river, which made a wide detour at this point.
Pearl settled herself in her rustic seat, putting the newspaper, which
she had left for the purpose, behind her back as she leaned against
the tree, to keep the powdery bark from marking her blue coat, and
leaning back contentedly, she drank in the spring sounds.
The sun, which stood almost at noon, seemed to draw the leaves out
like a magnet; she could almost believe she saw them unfolding; above
her head there was a perfect riot of bird's song, and a blue-bird,
like a burst of music, went flashing across the water. A gray squirrel
chattered as he ran up a tree behind her, and a rabbit, padding over
the dead leaves on his way to the lake, made a sound like a bear.
Up through the tree tops there had climbed a few blue rags of smoke,
for behind her a sleepy prairie fire was eating backward toward a
ploughed fire-guard, and the delightful acrid smell brought back the
memory of past prairie fires, pleasant enough to think of, as life's
battles are, if they end victoriously. Not a breath stirred in the
trees, and the prairie fire that smouldered so indolently was surely
the gentlest of its race.
Suddenly there came a gust of wind through the trees, which set them
creaking and crackling with vague apprehension, for the wind is
always the mischief maker--the tattler--the brawler who starts the
trouble--and the peaceful, slumbering absent-minded prairie fire,
nibbling away at a few dead roots and grass, had been too much for it.
Here was a perfectly good chance to make trouble which no wind could
resist.
A big black cloud went over the sun, and all in a minute the placid
waters of the lake were rasped into a pattern like the soles of new
rubbers--the trees were bending--crows cawing excitedly, and the fire,
spurred by the wind, went racing through the lake bottom and on its
way up the bank toward the open country. The cattle, which had
been feeding at the east side of the lake, sniffing danger, turned
galloping home to furnish an alibi in case of trouble.
But the excitement was short-lived owing to a circumstance which the
wind had overlooked. The wind had made a mistake in its direction, and
so the fire had one wild, glorious race up the bank only to find its
nose run right into a freshly ploughed fire-guard, steaming damp and
richly brown. The fire sputtered, choked and died down, black and
disappointed, leaving only a few smoking clumps of willows.
Then the wind, seeing no further chance of trouble, went crackling
away over the tree tops, and the sun came back, brilliant and warm
as ever, and there was nothing to show that there had been any
excitement, save only the waves on the lake. The wind was gone,
laughing and unrepentant, over the tree-tops; the sun had come back as
genially as if it had never been away--but the lake could not forget,
and it fretted and complained, in a perfectly human way, pounding the
bank in a futile attempt to get back at some one. The bank had not
been to blame, but it had to take the lake's repinings, while the real
culprit went free and unreproached.
Pearl could tell what the lake was saying, as it lashed itself foaming
and pounding just below her feet. It called to the world to listen.
"Look how I'm used," it sobbed, "and abused--and confused."
Pearl put her hands in the silk-lined pockets of her coat, and thought
about what she had just seen.
"Life is like this," she said at last, "human nature is full of
mischief. It loves to start trouble and fan a fire into a destructive
mood; and there's only one way to stop it--plough a fire-guard. I wish
there had been some one here to plough a fire-guard when the fires of
gossip began to run here three years ago."
"I'll go now and dress up, and break the news to the neighborhood that
I am going to the house at Purple Springs to board. There will be
a row--there will be a large row--unless I can make the people
understand, and in a row there is nothing so sustaining as good
clothes--next to the consciousness of being right, of course," she
added after a pause. An hour later, Pearl Watson, in her best dress
of brown silk, with her high brown boots well polished, and her small
brown hat, made by herself, with a band of crushed burnt orange
poppies around the crown, safely anchored and softened by a messaline
drape; with her hair drawn over the tops of her ears, and a smart
fawn summer coat, with buttons which showed a spot of red like a
pigeon-blood ruby. Pearl looked at herself critically in the glass:
"These things should not count," she said, as she fastened a thin veil
over her face and made it very neat at the back with a hairpin, "but
they do."
CHAPTER XX
ANNIE GRAY'S STORY
The Purple Springs district was going through a period of intense
excitement. Housework languished, dough ran over, dish-water cooled.
The news which paralyzed household operations came shortly after one
o'clock, when Mrs. Cowan phoned to Mrs. Brownless that the teacher had
just been in, and said she was going to board with the woman who lived
alone. The teacher had said it, according to Mrs. Cowan, in the "most
off-hand manner, just as if she said she had found her jackknife or
her other rubber--just as easy as that, she said she had found a
boarding house. Mrs. Howser could not take her, but Mrs. Gray could,
and she was moving over right away."
Mrs. Cowan, according to her own testimony, nearly dropped. She did
not really drop, but any one could easily have knocked her down;
she could have been knocked down with a pin feather. She could not
speak--she just stared. She went all "through other," and felt queer.