AN INTERLUDE
We saw Mrs. Trempleau once afterward—it was the following Autumn in the Berkshires—and of that time I must turn aside to tell. But the story is of Mrs. Trempleau’s little girl, Margaret.
Pelleas and I had gradually come to admit that Margaret knew many things of which we had no knowledge. This statement may very well be received either as proof of our madness or as one of the pastimes of our age; but we are reconciled to having both our pastimes and our fancies disregarded. We were certain that there are extensions of the experiences of every day which we missed and little Margaret understood.
This occurred to us the first time that we saw her. We were sitting on the veranda of a boarding house where we were come with Miss Willie Lillieblade to be her guests for a week. The boarding house was kept by a Quakeress, as famous for her asters as for her pasties. Mrs. Trempleau, who was there when we arrived (“She is like a flash of something, would thee not say?” observed the gentle Quakeress, “and she calls the child only, thee will have marked, ‘Run away now, Dearness.’”)—Mrs. Trempleau had just driven away in a high trap with orange wheels and a slim blond youth attached, when Margaret came up to the veranda from the garden.
“Smell,” she said to me.
As I stooped over the wax-white scentless blossoms in the child’s hand, I thought of that chorus of the flower girls in one of the Italian dramas: “Smell! Smell! Smell!”
“What are they, dear?” I asked, taking care not to shake her confidence by looking at her.
“I don’t know,” she said; “but O, smell!”
But though I held the flowers to my face I, who can even detect the nameless fragrance of old lace, could divine in them no slightest perfume. I held them toward Pelleas, dozing in a deep chair, and when he had lifted them to his face he too shook his head.
“It is strange,” he said; “I would say that they have no odour.”
“They’ve such a beautiful smell,” said the child, sighing, and took back her flowers with that which immediately struck Pelleas and me as a kind of pathetic resignation. It was as if she were wonted to having others fail to share her discoveries and as if she had approached us with the shy hope that we might understand. But we had failed her!
“Won’t you sit down here with us?” said I, dimly conscious of this and wistful to make amends. It is a very commonplace tragedy to fail to meet other minds—their fancies, their humour, their speculation—but I am loath to add to tragedy and I always do my best to understand.
We tried her attention that day with all that we knew of fairy stories and vague lore. She listened with the closest regard to what we offered but she was neither impressed nor, one would have said, greatly diverted by our most ingenious inventions. Yet she was by no means without response—we were manifestly speaking her language, but a language about which Pelleas and I had a curious impression that she knew more than we knew. It was as if she were listening to things which she already understood in the hope that we might let fall something novel about them. This we felt that we signally failed to do. Yet there was after all a certain rapport and the child evidently felt at ease with us.
“Come and see us to-morrow morning,” we begged when she left us. For having early ascertained that there was not a single pair of lovers in the house, possible or estranged, we cast about for other magic. In the matter of lack o’ love in that boarding house we felt as did poor Pepys when he saw not a handsome face in the Sabbath congregation: “It seems,” he complained, “as if a curse were fallen upon the parish.” Verily, a country house without even one pair of lovers is an anomaly ill to be supported. But this child was a gracious little substitute and we waited eagerly to see if she would return to us.
Not only did she return but she brought us food for many a day’s wonder. Next morning she came round the house in the sunshine and she was looking down as if she were leading some one by the hand. She lifted her eyes to us from the bottom step.
“I’ve brought my little sister to see you,” she said.
Then she came up the steps slowly as if she were helping uncertain feet to mount.
“Halverson can’t get up so very fast,” she explained, and seated herself on the top step holding one little arm as if it were circling some one.
Pelleas and I looked at each other in almost shy consternation. We are ourselves ready with the maddest fancies and we readily accept the imaginings of others—and even, if we are sufficiently fond of them, their facts. But we are not accustomed to being distanced on our own ground.
“Your—little sister?” said I, as naturally as I was able.
“Yes,” she assented with simplicity, “Halverson. She goes with me nearly all over. But she don’t like to come to see peoples, very well.”
At this I was seized with a kind of breathlessness and trembling. It is always wonderful to be received into the secrets of a child’s play; but here, we instinctively felt, was something which Margaret did not regard as play.
“How old is she?” Pelleas asked. (Ah, I thought, even in my excitement and interest, suppose I had been married to a man who would have felt it necessary to say, “But, my dear little girl, there is no one there!”)
“She is just as old as I am,” explained Margaret; “we was borned together. Sometimes I’ve thought,” she added shyly, “wouldn’t it ’a’ been funny if I’d been made the one you couldn’t see and Halverson’d been me?”
Yes, we agreed, finding a certain relief in the smile that she expected; that would have been funny.
“Then,” she continued, “it’d ’a’ been Halverson that’d had to be dressed up and have her face washed an’ a cool bath, ’stead o’ me. I often rish it could be the other way round.”
She looked pensively down and her slim little hand might have been straying over somebody’s curls.
“They isn’t no ’ticular use in bein’ saw,” she observed, “an’ Halverson’s got everything else but just that.”
“But can—can she talk?” Pelleas asked gravely.
“She can, to me,” the child answered readily, “but I do just as well as more would. I can tell what she says. An’ I always understand her. She couldn’t be sure other folks would hear her—right.”
Then the most unfortunate thing that could have happened promptly came about. Humming a little snatch of song and drawing on her gloves Mrs. Trempleau idled down the long piazza. She greeted us, shook out her lace parasol, and saw Margaret.
“My darling!” she cried; “go in at once to your practicing. And don’t come out again please until you’ve found a fresh hair ribbon.”
The child rose without a word. Pelleas and I looked to see her run down the steps, readily forgetful of her pretence about the little sister. Instead, she went down as she had mounted, with an unmistakable tender care of little feet that might stumble.
“Run on, Dearness! Don’t be so stupid!” cried Mrs. Trempleau fretfully; but the child proceeded serenely on her way and disappeared down the aster path, walking as if she led some one whom we did not see.
“She is at that absurd play again,” said the woman impatiently; “really, I didn’t know she ever bored strangers with it.”
“Does she often play so, madame?” Pelleas asked, following her for a few steps on the veranda.
Mrs. Trempleau shrugged.
“All the time,” she said, “O, quite ever since she could talk, she has insisted on this ‘sister.’ Heaven knows where she ever got the name. I never heard it. She is very tiresome with it—she never forgets her. She saves food for Halverson; she won’t go to drive unless there is room for Halverson; she wakes us in the night to get Halverson a drink. Of course I’ve been to specialists. They say she is fanciful and that she’ll outgrow it. But I don’t know—she seems to get worse. I used to lock her up, but that did no good. She insisted that I couldn’t lock Halverson out—the idea! She has stopped talking the nonsense to me, but I can see she’s never stopped pretending. When I have my nervous headaches I declare the dear child gives me cold chills.”
When she was gone Pelleas and I looked at each other in silence. Between the vulgar skepticism of the mother and the madness of believing that Margaret saw what we did not see, we hesitated not a moment to ally ourselves with the little girl. After all, who are we that we should be prepared to doubt the authority of the fancies of a child?
“They’ve been to specialists!” said Pelleas, shaking his head.
The night was very still, moonless, and having that lack of motion among the leaves which gives to a garden the look of mid-Summer. Pelleas and I stepped through the long glass doors of our sitting room, crossed the veranda and descended to the path. There we were wont to walk for an hour, looking toward the fields where the farm-house candles spelled out the meaning of the dark as do children instead of giving it forth in one loud, electric word as adults talk. That night we were later than on other nights and the fields were still and black.
“Etarre,” Pelleas said, “of course I want to live as long as I can. But more and more I am wildly eager to understand.”
“I know,” I said.
“‘I want to see my universe,’” he quoted. “Sometime,” he went on, “one of us will know, perhaps, and not be able to tell the other. One of us may know first. Isn’t it marvelous that people can talk about anything else? Although,” he added, “I’m heartily glad that they can. It is bad enough to hear many of us on the subject of beer and skittles without being obliged to listen to what we have to say on the universe.”
I remember a certain judge who was delightful when he talked about machinery and poultry and Chippendale; but the moment that he approached law and order and the cosmic forces every one hoped for dessert or leave-taking. Truly, there are worthy people who would better talk of “love, taste and the musical glasses” and leave the universe alone. But for us whose bread is wonder it is marvelous indeed that we can talk of anything else. Nor do Pelleas and I often attempt any other subject, “in such a night.”
“But I hold to my notion,” Pelleas said, “that we might know a great many extraordinary things before we die, if only we would do our best.”
“At all events,” said I, “we have at least got to be willing to believe them, whether they ever come our way or not. For I dare say that when we die we shall be shown only as many marvels as we are prepared for.”
“For example, Nichola—” suggested Pelleas.
At her name we both smiled. Nichola would not believe in darkness itself if it did not cause her to stumble. And she would as soon harbour an understanding of, say, the way of the moon with the tides as she would be credulous of witchcraft. Any comprehension of the results of psychical research would necessitate in Nichola some such extension of thought as death will mean to Pelleas and me. The only mystery for which she has not an instant explanation is death; and even of that she once said: “There ain’t much of anything mysterious about it, as I see. It’s plain enough that we hev to be born. An’ that we can’t be kep’ goin’. So we die.”
No, Nichola would not be prepared for the marvels of afterward. The universe is not “her” universe. But as for Pelleas and me no phenomenon could put us greatly out of countenance or leave us wholly incredulous. Therefore as we stepped across the lawn in the darkness we were not too much amazed to hear very near us a little voice, like the voice of some of the little night folk; and obviously in talk with itself.
“No, no,” we heard it saying, “I don’t fink it would be right. No—it wouldn’t be the way folks ought to do. S’posin’ everybody went and did so? With theirs?”
It was Margaret. We knew her voice and at the turn of the path we paused, fearing to frighten her. But she had heard our talking and she ran toward us. In the dimness I saw that she wore her little pink bedrobe over her nightgown and her hair was in its bedtime braids.
“Margaret—dear!” I said, for it was late and it must have been hours since she had been left to sleep, “are you alone?”
“No,” she answered, “Halverson is here.”
She caught my fingers and her little hand was hot.
“Halverson wants me to change places with her,” she said.
We found a bench and I held the child in my arms. She was in no excitement but she seemed troubled; and she drew her breath deeply, in that strange, treble sigh which I have known from no other who has not borne great sorrow. Have I said how beautiful she was? And there was about her nothing sprite-like, no elfin graces, no graces of a kind of angelic childhood such as make one fear for its flowering. She had merely the beauty of the child eternal, the beauty of normal little humankind. That may have been partly why her tranquil talk carried with it all the conviction which for some the commonplace will have.
“Do you think I ought to?” she asked us seriously.
“But see, dear one, how could that be?” I said soothingly. “What would you do—you and Halverson—if you were indeed to change places?”
“I s’pose,” she said thoughtfully, “that I should have to die an’ then Halverson would come an’ be me. An’ maybe I might get lost—on the way to being Halverson. But she begs me to change,” cried the child; “she—she says I’m not happy. She—she says if I was her I’d be happy.”
“Ah, well,” said I, “but you are happy, are you not?”
“Not very,” she answered, “not since papa went. He knew ’bout Halverson, an’ he didn’t scold. An’ he never laughed ’bout her. Since he went I haven’t had anybody to talk to—’bout Them.”
“About—whom?” I asked, and I felt for Pelleas’ hand in the darkness.
Margaret shook her head, buried against my arm.
“I can’t say Them,” she confessed, “because nobody has ever told me about them, an’ I don’t know how to ask. I can’t say Them. I can only see Them. I fink my papa could—too.”
“Now?” I asked, “can you see—now, Margaret?”
“I can—when I want to,” she answered, “I—move something in the back of my head. An’ then I see colours that aren’t there—before that. An’ then I hear what they say—sometimes,” said the child; “they make me laugh so! But I can’t ’member what it was for. An’ I can hear music sometimes—an’ when flowers don’t smell at all I—do that way to the back of my head an’ then the flowers are all ’fumery. I always try if other people can do that to flowers. You couldn’t, you know.”
“No,” I said, “we couldn’t.”
“No,” said the child, with her little sigh of resignation, “nobody can. But I fink my papa could. Well, an’ it’s Them that Halverson is with. She—I think she is ’em. An’ she says for me to come an’ be ’em, too—an’ she’ll hev to be me then; ’cause it isn’t time yet. An’ she’ll do the practicin’ an’ come in for tea when mamma’s company’s there. She says she’s sorry for me an’ she don’t mind bein’ saw for a while. Would you go?”
“But how would you do it, dear—how could you do it?” I asked, thinking that the practicality would bring her to the actualities.
“O,” said Margaret, simply, “I fink I would just have to move that in the back of my head long enough. Sometimes I ’most have—but I was ’fraid an’ I came back. Something ...” said the child, “something slips past each other in the back of my head when I want to....”
She threw her head against my breast and closed her eyes.
“Pelleas!” I cried, “O, Pelleas—take her! Let us get her in the house—quick.”
She opened her eyes as his arms folded about her to lift her.
“Don’t go so very fast,” she besought sleepily; “Halverson can’t go so very fast.”
My summons at the door of Mrs. Trempleau’s apartment brought no reply. Finally I turned the knob and we entered. The outer room was in darkness, but beyond a light was burning and there was Margaret’s bed, its pillow already pressed as if the little head had been there earlier in the evening. Pelleas laid her down tenderly and she did not open her eyes as I rearranged the covers. But when we would have moved a little away she spoke in her clear, childish treble.
“Please don’t go,” she said, “till Halverson gets asleep. If she’ll only go to sleep I’m not ’fraid.”
On this we sat by the bed and she threw one arm across the vacant pillow.
“Halverson sleeps there,” she said, “but sometimes she keeps me ’wake with her dreams.”
It may have been half an hour later when Pelleas and I nodded to each other that, her restlessness having ceased, she would now be safely asleep. In almost the same moment we heard the outer door open and some one enter the room, with a touch of soft skirts. We rose and faced Mrs. Trempleau, standing in the doorway. She was splendid in a glittering gown, her white cloak slipping from her shoulders and a bright scarf wound about her loosened hair.
We told her hurriedly what had brought us to the room, apologizing for our presence, as well we might. She listened with straying eyes, nodded, cast her cloak on a sofa and tried, frowning, to take the scarf from her hair.
“It’s all right,” she said in her high, irritable voice; “thanks, very much. I’m sorry—the child—has made a nuisance of herself. She promised me she’d go to sleep. I went up to the ball—at the hotel. She promised me—”
Her words trailed vaguely off, and she glanced up at us furtively. And I saw then how flushed her cheeks were and how bright her eyes—
“Margaret promised me she’d go to sleep,” she insisted, throwing the scarf on the floor.
And the child heard her name and woke. She sat up, looking at her mother, round-eyed. And at her look Mrs. Trempleau laughed, fumbling at her gloves and nodding at Margaret.
“Dearness,” she said, “we’re going away from here. You’ll have a new father presently who will take us away from here. Don’t you look at mother like that—it’s all right—”
Over the face of the child as Pelleas and I stood helplessly looking down at her came a strangeness. We thought that she was hardly conscious of our presence. Her eyes seemed rather to deepen than to widen as she looked at her mother, and the woman, startled and unstrung, threw out her hands and laughed weakly and without meaning.
“Mamma!” the child cried, “mamma!” and did not take her eyes from her face, “O, mamma, you look as if you had been dead forever—are you dead? You are dead!” cried Margaret. “O, They won’t touch you. They are running away from you. You’re dead—dead,” sobbed the child and threw herself back on her pillow. “O, papa—my papa!”
She stretched her little arm across the vacant pillow beside her.
“Halverson, I will—I will,” we heard her say.
As soon as we could we got the little Quakeress, for Mrs. Trempleau fainted and we were in a passion of anxiety for the child. She lay without moving, and when the village physician came he could tell us nothing. We slipped away to our rooms as the East was whitening and I found myself sobbing helplessly.
“She will die,” I said; “she knows how to do it—Pelleas, she knows what we don’t know—whatever it is we can’t know till we die.”
“Etarre!” Pelleas besought me, “I do believe she has made you as fantastic as she.” But his voice trembled and his hands trembled. And it was as if we had stood in places where other feet do not go.
But Margaret did not die. She was ill for a long time—at the last languidly, even comfortably ill, able to sit up, to be amused. Mrs. Trempleau was to be married in town, and on the day before the ceremony Pelleas and I went in, as we often did, to sit with Margaret. She was lying on a sofa and in her hands were some white, double lilies at which she was looking half-frowning.
“These don’t smell any,” she said to us almost at once; “I thought they would. It seems to me they used to smell but I can’t—find it now.”
She sat happily arranging and rearranging the blossoms until some one who did not know of our presence came through an adjoining room, and called her.
“Margaret! Margaret!”
She did not move nor did she seem to hear.
“They are calling you, dear,” Pelleas said.
She looked up at us quickly.
“What did they call me before—do you remember?” she said to us. “It wasn’t that.”
Of the danger to the child I, in my sudden wild wonder and curiosity, took no thought. I leaned toward her.
“Was it Halverson?” I asked.
Her face brightened.
“Yes,” she said, “somebody used to call me that. Why don’t they call me that now? What did you say the word is?”