IT was ten o'clock that morning of mid-May.The rain was over.Clouds and mists were gone, leaving an atmosphere of purest crystal.The sun floated a globe of gold in the yielding blue.Above the wilderness on a dead treetop, the perch of an eagle now flashing like a yellow weather-vane, a thrush poured the spray-like far-falling fountain of his notes over upon the bowed woods.Beneath him the dull green domes of the trees flashed as though inlaid with gems, white and rose.Under these domes the wild grapevines, climbing the forest arches as the oak of stone climbs the arches of a cathedral, filled the ceiling and all the shadowy spaces between with fresh outbursts of their voluptuous dew-born fragrance.And around the rough-haired Satyr feet of these vines the wild hyacinth, too full of its own honey to stand, fell back on its couch of moss waiting to be visited by the singing bee.
The whole woods emerged from the cloudy bath of Nature with the coolness, the freshness, the immortal purity of Diana united to the roseate glow and mortal tenderness of Venus; and haunted by two spirits: the chaste, unfading youth of Endymion and the dust-born warmth and eagerness of Dionysus.
Through these woods, feeling neither their heat nor their cold, secured by Nature against any passion for either the cooling star or the inflaming dust, rode Amy--slowly homeward from the ball.Yet lovelier, happier than anything the forest held.She had pushed her bonnet entirely off so that it hung by the strings at the back of her neck; and her face emerged from the round sheath of it like a pink and white tulip, newly risen and bursting forth.
When she reached home, she turned the old horse loose with many pattings and good-byes and promises of maple sugar later in the day; and then she bounded away to the garden to her aunt, of whom, perhaps, she was more truly fond than of any one in the world except herself.
Mrs.Falconer had quickly left off work and was advancing very slowly--with mingled haste and reluctance--to meet her.
"Aunt Jessica! Aunt Jessica!" cried Amy in a voice that rang like a small silver bell, "I haven't seen you for two whole nights and three whole days!"Placing her hands on Mrs.Falconer's shoulders, she kissed her once on each cheek and twice playfully on the pearly tip of the chin; and then she looked into her eyes as innocently as a perfect tulip might look at a perfect rose.
Mrs.Falconer smilingly leaned forward and touched her lips to Amy's forehead.The caress was as light as thistle-down--perhaps no warmer.
"Three entire days!" she said chidingly."It has been three months," and she searched through Amy's eyes onward along the tortuous little passages of her heart as a calm blue air might search the chambers of a cold beautiful sea-shell.
Each of these women instantly perceived that since they had parted a change had taken place in the other; neither was aware that the other noticed the change in herself.Mrs.Falconer had been dreading to find one in Amy when she should come home; and it was the one she saw now that fell as a chill upon her.Amy was triumphantly aware of a decisive change in herself, but chose for the present, as she thought, to keep it hidden; and as for any change in her aunt--that was an affair of less importance.
"Why, Aunt Jessica!" she exclaimed indignantly, "I don't believe you are glad to see me," and throwing her arms around Mrs.Falconer's neck, she strained her closely."But you poor dear auntie! Come, sit down.I'm going to do all the work now--mine and yours, both.Oh! the beautiful gardening!
Rows and rows and rows! With all the other work beside.And me an idle good-for-nothing!"The two were walking toward a rough bench placed under a tree inside the picket fence.Amy had thrown her arm around Mrs.Falconer's waist.
"But you went to the ball," said the elder woman."You were not idle there, I imagine.And a ball is good for a great deal.One ought to accomplish more there than in a garden.Besides, you went with John Gray, and he is never idle.Did--he--accomplish--nothing?""Indeed, he was not idle!" exclaimed Amy with a jubilant laugh."Indeed he did accomplish something--more than he ever did in his life before!"Mrs.Falconer made no rejoinder; she was too poignantly saying to herself:
"Ah! if it is too late, what will become of him? "The bench was short.Instinctively they seated themselves as far apart as possible; and they turned their faces outward across the garden, not toward each other as they had been used when sitting thus.
The one was nineteen--the tulip: with springlike charm but perfectly hollow and ready to be filled by east wind or west wind, north wind or south wind, according as each blew last and hardest; the other thirty-six--the rose: in its midsummer splendour with fold upon fold of delicate symmetric structures, making a masterpiece.
"Aunt Jessica," Amy began to say drily, as though this were to be her last concession to a relationship now about to end, "I might as well tell you everything that has happened, just as I've been used to doing since I was a child--when I've done anything wrong."She gave a faithful story of the carrying off of her party dress, which of course had been missed and accounted for, the losing of it and the breaking of her engagement with John; the return of it and her going to the ball with Joseph.This brought her mind to the scenes of the night, and she abandoned herself momentarily to the delight of reviving them.
"Ah! if you had been there, Aunt Jessica! If they had seen you in a ball dress as I've seen you without one: those shoulders! those arms! that skin!
You would have been a swan among the rough-necked, red-necked turkeys," and Amy glanced a little enviously at a neck that rose out of the plain dress as though turned by a sculptor.
The sincere little compliment beat on Mrs.Falconer's ear like a wave upon a stone.
