The Woman With a Past/A Moment's Halt
V.—A MOMENT'S HALT
... Day, my holiday, if thou ill usest
Me, who am only Pippa—old year's sorrow,
Cast off last night, will come again to-morrow.
PHILIPPA CARPENTER stepped out upon the back platform of the observation car, and looked about her as if upon a new world. They were crossing the Sierra Madres, and just dropping into the golden valley of California. All the day before they had hurtled through the strange and lonely mesa lands of Utah and Nevada, where sand and scrub rolled in an ugly travesty of the sea, and cactilike hobgoblins and horned demons stood out grotesquely against a dull sky. Pippa had felt as if she were passing through some strange troll country in a German fairy tale. Surely in such a world as this were the terrible kobold women, and the werewolves that hunt in the dark of the moon,
Then, in the dawning, she had lifted the shade in her stateroom and looked out upon rolling mountain reaches and shifting miles of mist, and a sort of uplift had come to her. For she was of those who receive impressions with almost magical speed and certainty. In all her travels she was forever rocked by the mood of the place. Perhaps that was why she had kept young so long. However intense her own mental and emotional occupation, she was never too absorbed in it to lose the thrill, and wonder, and interest of the highroad. Her purple-gray eyes, deep filled with the wine of much living, and suffering, and enjoying, were always on the lookout for that gay and rakish blade Adventure as he chanced to ride by. And she could meet him in the oddest places and glimpse his laughing eyes and shining sword where no one else ever suspected his presence.
It was in vague pursuit of him that she had turned her face toward the Pacific coast. She had unrest in her blood, and, moreover, she had had more than a due share of grief and disappointment of late; she must take wing again. And she had never seen the Pacific.
With the full flood of morning, the last sheets of mist had been torn away, and clung in shreds to the mountain peaks above. With the mist gone, a sky blue as to make one gasp was unrolled. And, from a land of dry white sand, and stubble, and cacti, the world had become a garden. Gay green covered the mountainside, deepening and brightening to a tropical richness as it extended down the valley. And the fragrance! What was it? Pippa closed her eyes and breathed it in. She was, like most emotional people, intensely susceptible to scents. Then it came to her that it was the perfume of millions of orange trees borne up the valley like incense!
The banks on either side of the train showed flowers new and strange to her—splashes of pinkish mauve and deep blue. Higher up, were flowering shrubs and trees as dark as pines, vet unlike them. She had never seen the eucalyptus before, and, in viewing its rich contrast against the other trees, it occurred to her that in California the greens alone made a color scheme well-nigh as varied as the spectrum.
A grimy brakeman passed her, muttering picturesque oaths, and she called to him: “Why are we stopping so long?”
“Washout,” he rejoined laconically; and then something in the charming face looking down at him made him smile unwillingly, and add: “Say, lady, if you think you'll get into Los Angeles in time for breakfast, you've got another guess coming. We're likely to be here a couple of hours or more!”
He passed on, and Pippa realized, with a pang of hunger, that there was no diner on the train. She went back into the car, and learned from the porter that the brakeman's ill tidings had been only too well grounded. Though only half an hour out of San Bernardino, they were likely to be stalled for two long, hungry hours. Pippa pinned on her hat and climbed out of the car. Somewhere, somehow, she was going to get some breakfast. Besides—what a wonderful morning it was! She had never outgrown the fleeting moods wherein the joy of life pulses unreasoningly. To-day the past and its dark places were lost—-charmed away by the smell of the orange trees and the rapturous blue sky of California.
They were halted just on the edge of the valley, which is veritably all one great garden. The big orange groves and important ranches were farther down, below San Bernardino, but already there were small farms and tiny clusters of orange trees. Pippa gasped with the wonder of that scent which assails one's senses like the fumes of a divine anesthetic. The oranges lay about the roots of the trees like heaps of red gold, and hung like tiny suns on the green branches, and all the while there were the masses of blossoms, too.
“Oh, brave little trees,” Pippa whispered, half aloud, “to bloom and bear fruit both at once!”
She climbed a bank all sweet and wet with dew, and laughed with delight at her first glimpse of the California poppies—golden-yellow and white. Was everything white and gold here in this miraculous country?
Through trees she went, and the railway tracks and train passed from view, and she was wandering in a country of romance and impossible adventure, where at any moment Pan might pipe from behind a bush, or a wood nymph come to talk to her.
She had an odd little trick of talking to herself, born of a great inherent loneliness—a loneliness that companionship had never been able entirely to dispel. So, as she walked on the dew-wet, poppy-stained grass, and breathed the gusts of orange-flower perfume—now near and overpowering, now seeming to fade into the fresh, unscented wind—she found herself repeating the words of the Persian who understood gardens no less than human hearts:
“A Moment's Halt—a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste—
And Lo!—the phantom Caravan has reach'd
The Nothing it set out from”
This was a moment's halt in her strange and restless life—a moment filled with silent music and a glamour that made her feel a girl again.
Suddenly she found herself standing before a little weather-beaten house.
“Why, it's just like a fairy tale!” she exclaimed delightedly.
The little house was buried in roses and hedged about with geraniums six feet tall. Those miraculous flowers of the Golden West had never met Philippa's sight before, and they added to the impossible, fairylike impression of the moment.
There was an odorous mass branching heliotrope growing over door like a vine, and red roses that had climbed an oak tree and starred its branches with blossoms.
“It's like a symbol,” thought Pippa vaguely; “but I don't know just what it's a symbol of!”
Holding her purple gown daintily from the dew, she stepped boldly forward and rapped at the door.
She almost expected a witch with a pointed hat and a stick to open it; but instead came a small, gentle old woman with dark eyes, soft hair as white as silver, and a look both wistful and wise.
She stared at her visitor with open wonder. Probably in all her life she had never seen anything so radiant as Philippa Carpenter, with her red hair and flower-white face, dressed in a gown that matched her eyes.
“Good morning,” said Mrs. Carpenter, smiling. “I'm most frightfully hungry, and I'm going to beg for a glass of milk!”
For she knew as soon as she looked at the little old woman that she must beg, and not offer to buy.
The little woman seemed to recover herself with a start.
“But, certainly,” she said, speaking with a soft French accent, and opening the door wide. “Will madame enter?”
Inside, everything was neat and exquisitely clean, though simple and primitive to bareness. The pots and pan on the walls were of copper, and shone like dark gold. The shelves held quaint old earthenware dishes brown, and white, and blue.
Philippa, who had seen Norman and Breton peasant cottages, felt a quick sense of familiarity. She spoke to the old woman in French, and a glow came into the wise, dark eyes—a glow that was still veiled with a wistfulness that seemed a component part of the Frenchwoman's being.
“Vous êtes très bien ici, madame.”
“Merci, madame; nous sommes tranquilles, voyons.”
She left the room for a moment and returned with a brimming cup of milk and a plate of brioches.
“I have not tasted anything so delicious since I left France,” Pippa assured her. The little, wistful old face flushed faintly with pride and pleasure.
“Henri, viens-toi!” she called softly, and a tremulous old voice answered immediately:
“Bien, Hélène!”
He came in promptly with something of Gallic impulse about him, in spite of a great weight of years and a stick that he leaned upon. He was a bright-eyed French peasant, clean and brown, with a ready smile on his wrinkled face, and a ready courtesy. The two of them made Philippa welcome exquisitely, plied her with the simple fare, and circled her about with that sense of gracious welcome and unaffected compliment which the Latin races can so warmly and delicately convey. All three talked happily in French, and Philippa could almost have dreamed herself back in one of her beloved country villages of France. And all about was the scent of the orange trees, and a glamour like that of a fairy tale.
It was quite suddenly that the interruption came. Philippa, speaking a trifle more loudly than usual, was astounded to hear a movement and a cry in the next room. The old couple, paling and trembling, met each other's eyes, and the woman hurried from the room.
“What is it?” asked Pippa, in a startled whisper. A vague sense of terror was creeping over her, clouding the fanciful, gay mood of the early morning
Madame,” said the old peasant huskily, “it is our son—our one boy. He had a terrible accident a few years ago that struck him blind—he—an artist!”
He bowed his head, while his face worked. Pippa felt her own throat contract in pity.
“His mind and body were hurt, too,” proceeded the father brokenly. “He is at all times patient and uncomplaining, but he grieves so bitterly that it is tearing his life away in handfuls. He—he cannot live long, madame!”
“It is his lost sight—his lost art that he grieves for?” asked Pippa softly. It seemed to her that she could hear a low pitiful sound of voices in the room beyond.
“That, madame, and—a woman. A woman he knew many years ago in France. We know little of her, his mother and I, but she must have been—sweet and tender.”
Pippa nearly cried at the gentle intonation of the old man's douce et tendre. The next moment the mother had entered the room. She went straight to Pippa.
“Madame,” she said, “you know of our—son?”
Pippa nodded silently.
“His mind is not broken,” said the old woman proudly; “but it has been hurt by much pain and endurance. He thinks—madame, forgive me—but he thinks that you are one whom he knew long ago, and has longed to hear news of for many years.”
“But—impossible” began Pippa, bewildered.
The mother raised a rough but slender hand in interruption.
“Sans doute, madamee—it is, indeed, impossible. But since it is his dream Oh, madame”—her little air of dignity broke suddenly—“madame, it is as if le bon Dieu had sent you to us. Will you not go in to our poor boy and speak to him? It will be but a few moments, and it can do you no harm. Let him believe that you are, indeed, his lost Désirèe.”
In silence, Pippa rose and followed the old woman into the inner room.
In a great chair near the open window sat a man; a man with prematurely white hair and eyes in which the tragic anxiety of blind burned always like a devouring flame, a flame without light.
“Speak to him,” whispered the old Frenchwoman. “His name is Gervais.”
“Gervais!” said Pippa. It seemed to her that she had only breathed the name, but the man in the chair started violently, and stretched out his arms toward her. She saw now that he was thin to emaciation, but bore the sharp, clear lines of what must have been rare beauty in the past.
“Her voice!” he gasped. “Hers!
“Whose voice, mon petit?” came from the mother softly.
“Her's—Désirèe's! I knew she would come back!”
The older woman looked at Pippa, whose face was colorless. Mother love and watchfulness that bordered on suspicion looked from the dark, wise eyes. Pippa forced herself to meet them.
“It seems almost as if you must have met my son before,” said the mother. “You are a very great actress, madame.”
“Désirèe,” said the blind man, with arms reaching toward her, “Désirèe—the well-desired! Have you come to me after all these years?”
She went quietly forward and knelt beside him. Then she bent her head and laid her cheek against one of the reaching, yearning hands.
“I am here,” she said in French, and drew the pins from her hat, letting it fall on the floor. The man smiled as he touched her hair.
“Are you still—beautiful, Désirèe? he whispered.
She did not answer. The old woman stood quietly in a corner and watched them. Through the open window came a boisterous flurry of wind heavy with the scent of orange flowers.
“Do you remember the days when I first christened you Désirèe? Not because your own dear name was not sweet enough, but because I wanted one all for myself. And though I could paint many things, and dreamed then of becoming a great artist, it was always you whom I wanted to paint—you, just you—in a hundred ways! With your splendid hair loose about you, or kneeling in prayer, or laughing, with your arms full of flowers—always you! Do you remember?”
“Yes.” She hardly breathed the words.
“Do you remember the queer old studio, and the brazier we used to cook over? And the kettle that always boiled over?”
“I remember—all.”
“And the quaint little market booths along the Seine—belovéd, you remember?”
“Yes.” Her face was colorless.
“And the print shop—and old Père Guillaume—and the woman who sold us artichokes, and was just like some one out of 'Ventre de Paris'?”
“Yes,” again.
“Bien-aimée, there are so many things to remember! There was a dawning when we looked from the window—the sixième étage, wasn't it?—and saw the mist on the river, and the Sacre Coeur far away, flushed in the light of sunrise, like a prayer above Montmartre. Rappelles-toi? I kissed you, Désirèe, and said 'Forever!'”
It seemed as if the woman beside him would fall, but she did not. Perhaps it was the gaze of the other woman who had borne him that kept her steadfast. Raising her own tired, purple-gray eyes, she met those other wise and anxious ones, and nodded. The mother seemed unaccountably and vaguely reassured, The man in the big chair reached out once more, tremulously, feverishly, for Pippa's hand, and she gave it to him—slim, and smooth, and exquisite to touch.
“Bien-aimée,” he whispered, “there is yet more to remember. Ah, I have not forgotten the Golden World, though I cannot see it any longer. There was Ville d'Avray, with the gray-green Corot trees, and you sat, with one glint of sunlight on your red hair, beside the lake; and you arms were bare—I knelt beside you and kissed them from the wrists to the soft curve within the elbow Oh, Désiree—the Desired One! You have not forgotten?”
“I have forgotten—nothing.”
“Désirèe—there is something I have to ask you—something I have to know, now that I have you with me again for a moment.”
A moment! Even he recognized that it was a moment only, a moment's halt in the busy onward surge of the days! Somewhere in the distance it seemed to Pippa that she could hear the sound of an engine's whistle. But for the one moment she seemed in a place remote and out of key with trains and practicalities. The blind man's hand lay on her hair, and the orange flowers sent their magical breath upon the wind.
“Then—in the old days,” said Gervais, speaking softly, “I had only one fear; I knew that some time we would part, that so exquisite and fresh a poem as ours could not last forever Yes, I knew it, Désirèe, even as I kissed the word 'Forever' into your lips And I feared—what do you think, bien-aimée. My own loneliness, my own desolation? No—something more terrible than all these—I feared that you, with your great heart, and your great spirit, and your generous warmth, would fall on evil places, and, instead of going upward to the light, would go down into darkness. Forgive me, belovéd, if I have wronged you, doubted you. But all these years I have waited to know if you are happy, and—good.”
An indescribable inflection made the simple word a thing of music.
The clean, bare little room whirled for a moment, and a crew of strange ghosts came out, mocking, from the corners. But once again the sweet old eyes of the gray-haired mother cleared the mists. And Pippa, feeling certain rings upon her finger heavier than ever ball and chain could be to a convict, answered steadily:
“I am happy—and I am—good. I have gone up into the light, not down into the darkness. I have fallen on no evil day. There is nothing for you to grieve about, Gervais—nothing—nothing!”
A light came into his face, and his arms sank back. The merciful lids, closing, shut out the painful agony of his sightless eyes.
“Kiss me good-by, Désirèe,” he murmured. And she did so, gently, as one might kiss the dead. He seemed to have fainted, he was so still; and, feeling her way, Pippa walked slowly out of the room.
The little old Frenchwoman followed noiselessly with her hat. As Pippa pinned it on, she heard the locomotive again, clearly this time, calling the passengers back to the train. The moment's halt was over.
“You are worn out with the strain, madame,” said the gentle old woman.
“It was a task the most exacting,” added the old man. “Madame has been an angel of sweetness!”
“If our boy dies, madame” said the mother, with a dropped inflexion.
Her husband straightened up. “When our boy dies, Hélene,” he said resolutely. “Le bon Dieu will not spare him to us; it is not to be.”
“He will, at least,” said the gentle old lady, “have died with the happiness blooming in his heart. He will have been reassured—strengthened Madame, are you ill—or faint?”
Pippa looked at her; for an instant she swayed slightly.
“It was all true,” she said tonelessly. “It was I—I He used to call me—Désirèe!”
She went out blindly and began walking slowly, haltingly, toward the train which was sending forth sharp and peremptory signals.
All about her was the scent of the orange groves and the glamour of a day long dead.