Idyl of work / Lucy Larcom [electronic text]

VIII.

"GOOD by, girls! I am homeward bound. To-night I shall nod back Chocorua's welcome. Girls, They talk of strikes,—they say that half the looms Must stop, or wages be reduced. A muss Of some kind will be stirring. So get leave To come, and, till it settles, rest with me. Come! I'm in earnest." Minta Summerfield Stood in her cottage-bonnet and bright shawl Outside the door, just as the bell rang in The girls from half-hour breakfasting. They gave Hurried replies, half-promises. The coach Rolled out of sight. The summer seemed to go With Minta's breezy laughter from their side; Might they not follow? Eleanor demurred, Because of Isabel left behind. "But Ruth,

Ruth will be with her; each will care for each; And Isabel loves Ruth, and Ruth is kind."

So Esther, in her cheerful way, went on Planning the journey; and before aware, They found themselves inhaling the fresh breath Of the hill-country, from the stage-coach top.

O that first burst of beauty from the shore Of Winnepesaukee, where the mountains lay Floating, a chain of ever-varying pearls In shifting light and shadow! It was like The Book of Revelation, Esther said; The vision of a new heaven and new earth; Gleams of the Bride's celestial jewelry, From the white City Of God. But Eleanor Sat still, as one entranced, her dove-like eyes Filled with unutterable light. They stayed An evening and a morning by the Lake, Among the tangled sweet-briers of the steep, Where, sitting upon fern-wreathed rocks, they saw The low sun redden against Ossipee, The white moon's shadow drift like a canoe Among innumerable islands green;

And all the water's glory, fading, blend At last into one wavering spectacle, Commingling islands, billows, hills, and sky.

Then, after next day's noon-glare, they went up For nearer greeting of the hills; and saw, Through veils of rain, green summits come and go; And saw a lucent rainbow, laid against A mountain's purple slope, clear and intense With unadulterate color; and at last The landscape was all mountains. The whole range Rose near and dark, its grand horizon-lines Cut on the northern sky from east to west, Like the long swell of an oncoming wave Stiffened to granite ere it broke. Vast clouds Moving to eastward in slow cavalcade Now hid and now revealed one lofty peak Whose white head, worn and haggard with the storms Of æons, held its mighty symmetry Amid surrounding chaos. The two girls, Who best knew mountains glimpsed among the leaves Of the Old Testament, seemed to behold The glooms of Sinai! Esther told her thought To Eleanor, who whispered back, "The Lord

Is in His holy temple; let us keep Silence before Him. "So they fared along To a broad, well-tilled upland, whence the hills More smiling looked, amid brown pasture-lands And pleasant farm-enclosures, neighborly As sentinels who keep no dangerous watch.

The coach stopped. From a roadside cottage-porch, Wreathed with convolvulus, out flew a form Familiar. "Welcome!" Minta Summerfield Called, with a clap of hands. "Come in! come in! You are not used to rough-and-tumble roads. Poor wayfarers! I hope your bones are sound!"

The days that followed, in and out of doors,With best home-cheer, and still fresh pages turned Of wonder and of beauty, everywhere The sun could lay his finger,—light of light On the receding and advancing hills, The sweet air like a flagon of new wine Freshening their senses, wakening fantasies That heretofore slept dreamless, making life Seem nobler, better, dearer than itself,— Those days were treasure which no flimsy wealth Of words could represent. To some new world They seemed translated.

Here was Minta's home With her tall farmer-brother, Clement, who, Had won a wife as sweet as he deserved, A steady-natured and wise-hearted one, Who toiled with him, not holding work the end Of their joint life, but kept a margin clear For studious thought, for books, for all that helped The mother and the woman to be true; So broadening, as she could, their rustic lot.

Sisters in love as well as law, the two, Mercy and Minta, homely labors shared, And simple joys, and cheerfulness of health. And pleasant was the long ride home from school Over the windings of the Tamworth hills, After each week of absence, when they came, Clement and Mercy, with two sunburnt boys,— Cupids in bronze, till winter showed fair brows And rosy apple-cheeks by fireside light, Like Raphael's cherubs,—when the happy four Came in the old farm-wagon, the white horse Jogging on slowly for the landscape's sake, Or the good company he bore, and took Minta's gay presence back with them, to bloom Into their Sabbath-Siloam of peace.

The schoolhouse door was closed now, and the girls Drove the white Wizard anywhere they would, The faithful beast by Esther named, because He bore them always through enchanted ground; So seemed the mountains to her fancy, bred Beside the gray-blue level of the sea, And grassy borders of the Merrimack.

One day they reached an inn upon a knollAt noontide, hungering and tired, and there For the good Wizard's welfare and their own, They rested. In the low-ceiled dining-room, Among the lingerers of the summer, sat A lovely gray-haired woman, whose mild eyes Looked welcome, and who led them with kind words, After their meal, out under sheltering elms, Where they could see strange peaks, invisible From the home-cottage, ten good miles away.

In that sweet woman-stranger's heart sprang up For Eleanor a secret tenderness. Her she besought to stay, so pale she looked, So long the journey home. And Esther, too, Blaming herself for Eleanor's fatigue, Added her urging. Eleanor yielded then,

And let the Wizard bear her friends away, Looking and listening till his distant hoofs Fell light as raindrops; then, half homesick, moaned.

But she was met by thoughtfulness too kind To be resisted. Miriam Willoughby, A single woman with a mother's heart Such as too many a child cries after, mocked By the empty mother-name, knew just what word To whisper, what soft silence to enfold About the maid, and she was comforted.

And when, at dawn, slow vapors climbed the hills Before the pleasant hostelry, and left Crags of dark green contrasted with pure blue, These new-made friends beheld the mountains play Like dolphins in their sun-bath, with the clouds That clung to them, or slipped off unaware Into a sea of azure, drenching them With half-concealing sheen. And presently The elder woman called, "Look! Eleanor, look!" And where her finger pointed, where the mists Had fallen again, and left the whole world gray As if with coming rain, far, far beyond The wave-like outline of the mountain-range,

A sun-touched summit glistened, a great pearl Held in a cup-like hollow of near hills Dark with contrasted glory. "O, too fair! Too delicate to gaze or breathe upon! Is it not heaven itself?" And Eleanor's eyes Grew luminous as she looked. A veil came down Upon the vision. Miriam Willoughby Took Eleanor's hand, and said, "'T was but a hill Like these around us, but a little higher,— Although crowned monarch of New England peaks. And may not heaven itself be common life In uttermost perfection? Such a glimpse Comes now and then to us from human souls, Lit with divine ideas and purposes. Is not man as the angels, only made A little lower? And who knows what shall be Revealed in him, shone on by other suns?"

The mist became a rainfall, and that day No Esther came, so the two women sat And wound their friendship firm with genial talk Each of the other's welfare, and of things Wherein they found their aspirations blend.

For though this Miriam Willoughby had place In high society, nor toiled nor spun More than the lilies, with her lily hands Still as unwrinkled as her face, while snows Of threescore years had whitened on her head, Her heart and brain held a whole lifetime full Of sympathy and generous help, nor once Allowed the thought that fortune, gifts, or birth, Privileged arrogance, or permitted scorn Of any toiler in the human hive.

The years had dwelt with her most peacefully, Each one a guest more welcome than the last; And why the ripening of her days should be Clouded with vain regrets for blossom-time, As with some women, she had seen no cause, With autumn in her heart surpassing spring In subtle fragrance and perennial bloom. Yet motherhood, a fountain sealed within, Sometimes made lonesome music, and she longed For those who needed her caress, her close And separate overwatch of yearning care.

All orphanage awoke her love; but now This Eleanor, who toiled for daily bread,

In her pale beauty, fragile unto pain, Seemed to glide in and fill the emptiest nook Of her warm heart, that echoed, "Mine! my child!"

A feeling near akin to jealousy She recognized when Esther came at last, So waited for by Eleanor; but, ashamed Before itself, her heart gave room to both; And days and days she kept them at her side, Growing to them most dear. The roadside inn Was homelike, and the three friends went and came, Together or alone, free as the breeze That rippled Bearcamp Water. As she watched The two girls wandering down the meadow-road, One golden morning, Miriam Willoughby Sat at her window, and, in pauses, wrote To one who shared her passion for the hills:—

"Dear Nephew Ralph, it often seems to me As if we should change places. 'T is not fair That you should toil in the metropolis At stifling office-work, at my affairs More than your own, I fear, while I enjoy Perpetual leisure, drinking peace and health

Out of the mountain chalices. For you 'T is hard, who Nature as a mother love, As you do me, you old romantic aunt, Whose heart remains a girl's in loving you, Her squire and champion. We'll let business go, While I write of these hills, at your desire,— The friendly hills, that, while I am away From all I love, must take the place of friends.

"This mountain-group, before my window ranged, Is noble company to have in sight, To sit down with at any hour of day,— To meet their faces looking toward the east At the sunrising, wrapped in soft noon-mist, Or outlined keen upon the auroral night, Or sinking into sunset deeps of heaven, Unutterably glorious. Yet sometimes, As one may weary of too great a throng Of noble guests, and call them each apart For closer conference, I move my seat Little by little, so that only one Is for the time in sight. "Green Ossipee, With Bearcamp River singing at its base, A vast, long-terraced wall of fir and pine,

Shuts in our southern meadows. Where that ends, Just where the sun sets in October days, Mount Israel stands and guards his villages, And hides the secret of a windy pass To Thornton, and the Haystacks of the Notch.

"Then the eye rests upon Black Mountain's top Of sombre velvet, highest of these hills, That gathers the rich purple and deep gold Of fine late light into his vesture's folds, Yet, in his rounded symmetry, appears Less grand than Whiteface, his next-neighbor peak, Looking, sharp-cut and gray, out of the north, With outreach of bare shoulder; in his side A gash deep-hollowed, where the sun at noon Pours clearest oil and wine. "Some sonneteer, Travelling this way, has hung a little web Of misty melody about his brow. Travelling this way, he must have wandered on Over steep roads of Sandwich, when he wrote Of Whiteface as a monarch whom the clouds Gather toward, wingéd daughters of the sky,— For of this vale Chocorua is king.

CLOUDS ON WHITEFACE.

So lovingly the clouds caress his head,—The mountain-monarch; he, severe and hard, With white face set like flint horizon-ward; They weaving softest fleece of gold and red, And gossamer of airiest silver thread, To wrap his form, wind-beaten, thunder-scarred. They linger tenderly, and fain would stay, Since he, earth-rooted, may not float away. He upward looks, but moves not; wears their hues; Draws them unto himself; their beauty shares; And sometimes his own semblance seems to lose, His grandeur and their grace so interfuse; And when his angels leave him unawares, A sullen rock, his brow to heaven he bares.

"'T is curious, Ralph, the naming of these hills,— Black Mountain from his dark pine-growth; and this From his vast, perpendicular front of quartz Cutting the sky, a wedge of adamant. 'White,' ' Black,' 'Green,' 'Blue,' were obviously conferred Out of the settlers' poverty; worse taste

Was theirs who threw pell-mell on Agiochook A shower of Presidential surnames. Yet, Why nickname all this grandeur? 'Ragged,' 'Bald,' 'Toad,' 'Snout,' and 'Hunchback,'—so you hear them. called Among the farmers roundabout. "One day We went out on a christening-tour, two girls And I; we said the red man should receive His own again, and with Chocorua And Passaconaway, should Paugus stand. That crouching shape, a headless heap afar, Glittering as if with barbarous ornaments, Suits well the sachem whose wild howl resounds Through history like the war-whoop of the wind. And all that craggy chaos at his side Shall be the Wahwa Hills, for the grim chief Who after Paugus trails uncertainty Of blood-stained memory, in dim ruin lost. And that bright cone of perfect emerald Whose trout-streams flow through birchen intervales,— An angler's Paradise,—that shall be called For Wannalancet, peacefullest of all The forest sagamores, the one who loved The white man best, found him most treacherous.

"The mighty name of Passaconaway, Honored of all his tribe, and honored too Of pioneers, with whom he held firm truce, Life-long, rests fitly on yon pyramid Of stately greenness. Were he sorcerer Or not, he is a cloud-compeller still.

"Beside him leans Chocorua from his hold, With the curse stiffened on his silent lips, Gazing upon the shadow of himself In his lake-mirror. Nobly picturesque Is ragged, legend-wrapped Chocorua, Leader of this long file of mountain-shapes, Most human-seeming in his sharp contours.

Here is a picture of him, from the same Stray rhymer's pencil, showing possible moods Of this most moody mountain-sagamore, Who, savage as he is, knows how to smile.

CHOCORUA.

THE pioneer of a great company That wait behind him, gazing toward the east,— Mighty ones all, down to the nameless least,—

Though after him none dares to press, where he With bent head listens to the minstrelsy Of far waves chanting to the moon, their priest. What phantom rises up from winds deceased? What whiteness of the unapproachable sea? Hoary Chocorua guards his mystery well: He pushes back his fellows, lest they hear The haunting secret he apart must tell To his lone self, in the sky-silence clear. A shadowy, cloud-cloaked wraith, with shoulders bowed, He steals, conspicuous, from the mountain-crowd.

"Yet, Ralph, the noblest landscape was but meant To be a background for humanity. And these two girls,—you need not be afraid (I know the shyness of your bachelor-heart) Of two young mill-girls,—ladies, both of them, As I translate the word,—will go away, Only too soon, will leave me quite alone; And loneliness after good company Is not the bearable sort. "Do not forget To speak of Rodney when you write. Poor boy! Brother so unlike you! If he could feel

The baptism of one work-day's honest sweat, Happy for him! To wear his idleness As gracefully as the last cut of coat Seems his life's end and purpose. "Nephew Ralph, Be idle just one week yourself! for here I and the mountains wait and hope for you!"