The Brimming Cup. Dorothy Canfield Fisher

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СКАЧАТЬ brother's mittened hand in hers. She said nothing, but her look on the little boy's face was loving and maternal.

      Paul assured his mother seriously, "Oh, I'll look out for Mark, all right."

      Mark wriggled and said, "I can looken out for myself wivout Paul!"

      Their mother looked for a moment deep into the eyes of her older son, so clear, so quiet, so unchanging and true. "You're a good boy, Paul, a real comfort," she told him.

      To herself she thought, "Yes, all his life he'll look out for people and get no thanks for it."

      She followed the children to the door, wondering at her heavy heart. What could it come from? There was nothing in life for her to fear of course, except for the children, and it was absurd to fear for them. They were all safe; safe and strong and rooted deep in health, and little Mark was stepping off gallantly into his own life as the others had done. But she felt afraid. What could she be afraid of? As she opened the door, their advance was halted by the rush upon them of Paul's dog, frantic with delight to see the children ready to be off, springing up on Paul, bounding down the path, racing back to the door, all quivering eager exultation. "Ah, he's going with the children!" thought Marise wistfully.

      She could not bear to let them leave her and stood with them in the open door-way for a moment. Elly rubbed her soft cheek against her mother's hand. Paul, seeing his mother shiver in the keen March air, said, "Mother, if Father were here he'd make you go in. That's a thin dress. And your teeth are just chattering."

      "Yes, you're right, Paul," she agreed; "it's foolish of me!"

      The children gave her a hearty round of good-bye hugs and kisses, briskly and energetically performed, and went down the stone-flagged path to the road. They were chattering to each other as they went. Their voices sounded at first loud and gay in their mother's ears. Then they sank to a murmur, as the children ran along the road. The dog bounded about them in circles, barking joyfully, but this sound too grew fainter and fainter.

      When the murmur died away to silence, there seemed no sound left in the stark gray valley, empty and motionless between the steep dark walls of pine-covered mountains.

      Marise stood for a long time looking after the children. They were climbing up the long hilly road now, growing smaller and smaller. How far away they were, already! And that very strength and vigor of which she was so proud, which she had so cherished and fostered, how rapidly it carried them along the road that led away from her!

      They were almost at the top of the hill now. Perhaps they would turn there and wave to her.

      No, of course now, she was foolish to think of such a thing. Children never remembered the people they left behind. And she was now only somebody whom they were leaving behind. She felt the cold penetrate deeper and deeper into her heart, and knew she ought to go back into the house. But she could not take her eyes from the children. She thought to herself bitterly, "This is the beginning of the end. I've been feeling how, in their hearts, they want to escape from me when I try to hold them, or when I try to make them let me into their lives. I've given everything to them, but they never think of that. I think of it! Every time I look at them I see all those endless hours of sacred sacrifice. But when they look at me, do they see any of that? No! Never! They only see the Obstacle in the way of their getting what they want. And so they want to run away from it. Just as they're doing now."

      She looked after them, yearning. Although they were so far, she could see them plainly in the thin mountain air. They were running mostly, once in a while stopping to throw a stone or look up into a tree. Then they scampered on like squirrels, the fox-terrier bounding ahead.

      Now they were at the top where the road turned. Perhaps, after all, they would remember and glance back and wave their hands to her.

      Now they had disappeared, without a backward look.

      She continued gazing at the vacant road. It seemed to her that the children had taken everything with them.

      A gust of icy wind blew down sharply from the mountain, still snow-covered, and struck at her like a sword. She turned and went back shivering, into the empty house.

PART I

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

OLD MR. WELLES AND YOUNG MR. MARSH

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      An Hour in the Life of Mr. Ormsby Welles, aet. 67 March 15, 1920. 3:00 P.m.

      Having lifted the knocker and let it fall, the two men stood gazing with varying degrees of attention at the closed white-painted old door. The younger, the one with the round dark head and quick dark eyes, seemed extremely interested in the door, and examined it competently, its harmoniously disposed wide panels, the shapely fan-light over it, the small panes of greenish old glass on each side. "Beautiful old bits you get occasionally in these out-of-the-way holes," he remarked. But the older man was aware of nothing so concrete and material. He saw the door as he saw everything else that day, through a haze. Chiefly he was concerned as to what lay behind the door. … "My neighbors," he thought, "the first I ever had."

      The sun shone down through the bare, beautiful twigs of the leafless elms, in a still air, transparent and colorless.

      The handle of the door turned, the door opened. The older man was too astonished by what he saw to speak, but after an instant's pause the younger one asked if Mr. and Mrs. Crittenden were at home and could see callers. The lean, aged, leather-colored woman, with shiny opaque black eyes, opened the door wider and silently ushered them into the house.

      As long as she was in sight they preserved a prudent silence as profound as hers, but when she had left them seated, and disappeared, they turned to each other with lifted eyebrows. "Well, what was that, do you suppose?" exclaimed the Younger. He seemed extremely interested and amused. "I'm not so sure, Mr. Welles, about your being safe in never locking your doors at night, as they all tell you, up here. With that for a neighbor!"

      The older man had a friendly smile for the facetious intention of this. "I guess I won't have anything that'd be worth locking doors on," he said. He looked about him still smiling, his pleasant old eyes full of a fresh satisfaction in what he saw. The room was charming to his gaze, cheerful and homey. "I don't believe I'm going to have anything to complain of, with the folks that live in this house," he said, "any more than with any of the rest of it."

      The other nodded. "Yes, it's a very good room," he agreed. After a longer inspection, he added with a slight accent of surprise, "An oddly good room; stunning! Look at the color in those curtains and the walls, and the arrangement of those prints over that Chippendale sewing-table. I wonder if it's accidental. You wouldn't think you'd find anybody up here who could achieve it consciously."

      He got to his feet with a vigorous precision of movement which the other admired. "Well, he's grown to be considerable of a man," he thought to himself. "A pity his father couldn't have lived to see it, all that aliveness that had bothered them so much, down at last where СКАЧАТЬ