Читать книгу The Woman Who Vowed (The Demetrian) - Ellison Harding - Страница 4

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HARVESTING AND HARMONY

We had finished breakfast now, and my hunger satisfied, I was free to look about me a little. The hall was lofty, and the roof supported by Gothic arches, sculptured by hands that had enjoyed the work; for although the design of the building was simple and dignified it was covered with ornaments of bewildering complexity. We were waited on by women who could not be distinguished from those upon whom they waited; of every age and of every type, most of them were glowing with health and cheerfulness. They laughed a great deal with one another, and offered me advice as to what they put before me; warned me when a dish was hot, and recommended the cream as particularly fresh and sweet. They made me feel as though I had been there for years and knew every one of them intimately. Just as we were finishing, a fine old man with a white beard and a patriarchal countenance joined us:

"You come from a couple of centuries ago," he said.

"Is it two centuries, or a thousand years?" asked I.

"I have been looking at your clothes; you don't mind, do you? they indicate the end of the nineteenth or beginning of the twentieth century."

"You have guessed right," said I; "and what year are you?"

"We count from the last Constitution which was voted ninety-three years ago, in 2011 of your reckoning. So we call the present year 93."

"So you have given up the old Constitution," I said with a touch of sentiment in my voice.

"Yes, it had to be changed when we advanced to where we are now in methods of manufacture and distribution of profits."

"Can you give your methods a name?"

"You used to call it Collectivism; we call it Solidarity."

"You mean to say you actually practise Collectivism!"

The patriarch smiled.

"Your writers used to say it was impossible," he said; "just as the English engineers once said the building of the Suez Canal was impossible, and our own engineers the building of the Panama Canal was impossible. As a matter of fact, Collectivism is as much easier than your old plan as mowing with a reaper is easier than mowing with a scythe. You will see this for yourself—and you will see" here his brow darkened—"that the real problem—the as yet unsolved problem—is a very different one. But Cleon must join the haymakers; what would you like to do?"

I was much interested in the old man and was anxious to hear what he had to say about the "as yet unsolved problem," which I already guessed. But I was still more anxious to be with Lydia, so I asked:

"Does Cleon work with his sister?"

"Yes," said Cleon, "on the slope, a few minutes from here."

"Perhaps I had better make myself useful," said I hypocritically.

I thought I detected a little smile behind the big white beard as the old man said to Cleon, "Well, hurry off now; you are late."

I followed Cleon up the hill. He explained to me on the way that the meadows were all cut by machinery, but that the slopes had still to be cut by hand. We soon came upon a group in which I recognized Lydia and Ariston. They were on a steep hill. Lydia was swinging her scythe with the strength and skill of a man. She was the nearest to me of a row of ten, all swinging together. Ariston was singing an air that followed the movement; he sang low; and all joined occasionally in a modulated chorus. Cleon took up a scythe and joined them. I was glad to observe that there was no scythe for me, for I had never handled one. I stood watching the work. When the song was over they worked in silence, but the rhythm of their swinging replaced the music. It reminded me of the exhilarating harmony of an eight-oared crew. At last one of the girls cried out, "I want to rest"; and all stopped.

"I was hoping some one would cry 'halt!'" said Ariston.

"So was I," whispered Lydia to him.

"So were we all," called out the rest.

They sat down on the grass; after a moment's breathing space Ariston lifted his hand; all looked at him, and he started a fugue which was taken up, one after another, by the entire party; to my surprise and delight I recognized Bach's Number Seven in C flat, and I began to understand the rôle that music might play in the life of a people, and what a pitiable business our twentieth-century notion of it was. Confined to a few laborious executants and still fewer composers, the rich partook of it at stated hours in overheated rooms, and the masses ignored it, except in its most vulgar form, almost altogether; while here, under a tree in the large light of the sun during an interval of rest, all not only enjoyed it, but joined in it at its best. I singled out Lydia's rich contralto and noted how she dwelt on the notes that marked changes of key, with a delight in counter-point that belonged to her mathematical temperament. I watched her every movement. She had thrown off the loose gloves she wore while mowing and was lying on her face, playing with a flower. The posture would have been regarded by us of the twentieth century as unmaidenly; but in the atmosphere created by the simplicity of these people I felt as though I were in one of Corot's pictures. Maidenliness had ceased to be a matter of convention and had become a matter of fact. There was a fund of reserve behind the frankness of Lydia's manner that conveyed a conviction of rectitude entirely beyond the necessity of a rigorous manner, or of a particular method of deportment.

I seemed to be transported back to the peasantry of some parts of France or of the Tyrol; but here was an added refinement that demolished the distance which had always kept me despairingly aloof from these; here was the charm of frankness, of gayety, and of simplicity, coupled with a cleanliness of person, delicacy of thought and manner, culture, art, music—all that makes life beautiful and sweet.

The young men and women who sat singing under the trees, smitten here and there with patches of sunlight, were all of them comely and wholesome of body and mind; but Lydia was to me preëminent; and yet, could it be said that she was beautiful? Her eyes were long and narrow and when I crossed glances with her they escaped me; so that I forgot the matter of beauty in my eagerness to penetrate their meaning; her face was too square to satisfy the ideal; her nose was distinctly tip-tilted, like the petal of a flower; her mouth was large and well shaped—altogether desirable; and her hair was flaxen and straight, but in its coils it seemed to have a separate life of its own so brightly did it gleam and glow.

Lydia was the first to jump up and suggest that work be resumed; and as she stood among the prostrate forms of her companions she embodied to my mind Diana, with a scythe in her hand instead of a bow. All arose together and set to work again, but in silence this time; and under the shade where I sat, nothing broke the quiet save the hum of insect life in the blazing sun and the periodic swirl of the reapers. They did not rest again until the patch of hillside at which they worked was mown, when with a sigh of satisfaction they rested a moment on their scythes; but for a moment only, for presently Lydia ran for shelter from the sun to the shade of the tree under which I sat. She reclined quite close to me, looked me frankly in the face and smiled. I was surprised to find eyes that had escaped me till now suddenly become fixed composedly on mine, and noticed for the first time that these women put on and off their coquetry according to the context of their thought, for presently she said:

"I am afraid you are lazy!"

"I believe I am," answered I.

"You mean to say you wouldn't like to join us in our work?"

There was not the slightest reproach in her voice, only surprise.

"I much prefer looking at you," I replied with a little attempt at gallantry. But there was no response in her eyes that remained fixed on me. She was trying to explain me to herself. I felt uncomfortable at being a mere object of abstract curiosity. She was reclining on her side, resting on one hand: in the other hand she was absently twisting a flower she had plucked. Notwithstanding my discomfort I rejoiced in at last plunging my look deep into hers. What was happening in the blue depths of those eyes? I felt as though I were trying to penetrate the secrets of a house the windows of which reflected more light than they passed through. I saw the reflection only. Behind was a judge weighing me in the balance, but as to whose judgment I could form no idea. And although I was conscious that in her I had a critic, I was so bewitched by her charm that I said to her in an undertone—for the others were talking to one another:

"You are very beautiful!"

She waved her flower before my eyes as though to put a material obstacle, however frail, between us and smiled; but she looked down presently and laughingly answered:

"That doesn't make you any the less lazy."

I did not wish to be set down permanently in her mind as good for nothing, so I explained:

"I am not incurably so; indeed, at my own work I was industrious; but I never held a scythe in my life."

She looked at me again in open-eyed wonder.

"What was 'your own work'?" asked she.

"I practised law."

"What, nothing but law? Did you never get tired of doing nothing but law?"

"We believed in specializing."

"Ah, I remember! The nineteenth century was the great century of specialization. Later on it was found that specialization was necessary to original work, but that it brutalized labor; we have very few specialists now: only those who have genius for particular things, as, for example, doctors, engineers, electricians—but we have no lawyers." She laughed at me with bantering but good-natured contempt in her laugh as she emphasized the word "lawyers." "And you mean to say you did nothing but lawyerise?" And she suddenly with finger and thumb lifted my free hand that was resting on the grass—for I was reclining on my other elbow, too—and I became aware that my hand was soft and white.

"It wasn't always soft and white," I explained. "I did a great deal of rowing at college."

She kept hold of my hand with finger and thumb and laughed gently:

"I don't believe it ever did a useful bit of work in its life."

I was piqued; and yet her low laugh was so catching, her long eyes so subtle, her lips so bewitching, that I gladly let my hand hang in her contemptuous fingers so long as I could be near her and in commune with her.

"That depends on what you call useful work," said I.

"I call useful any work that contributes to our health, wealth, and well-being." The coquetry went out of her manner again and she became thoughtful. "The people of that time needed lawyers to fight their battles for them, but we have got rid of at any rate one principal occasion of discord—the occasion that made lawyers necessary. We have men specially versed in the law still, but they don't confine themselves to law; they cut hay too. Ariston is a great lawyer."

She had dropped my hand by this time; as she mentioned Ariston we both looked toward him; one of the girls exclaimed:

"I am hot; let's sing something cool."

"The Fountain," called out another.

Ariston lifted his hand again, and after beating a measure struck a clear high note; he held the note during a measure and then his voice came tumbling down the scale in bursts of semitones relieved by tonic spaces, with a variety that reminded me of the Shepherd's song in "Tristan and Isolde." The moment he left the first high note it was taken up by another voice during the full measure, and as soon as the second voice dropped down the scale, a third one pitched the high note again, and so on voice after voice, the high note imaging the highest point of the jet d'eau, and every voice dropping tumultuously down into a placid pool of infinite variety below. Lydia did not attempt the high note, but beginning low kept at the low level in peaceful contrast to the sparkling tenors and sopranos, the whole musical structure resting on the bass which moved ponderously and contrapuntally against the contraltos.

How shall I tell the thoughts that crowded upon me as, lying on my back, I listened to this amazing harmony! The beginning reminded me of one of Palestrina's masses and transported me to a Christmas midnight at the church of St. Gervais; but as soon as the intention of the strain became clear to me, I felt that it belonged to the open air, to the eternal spaces, to the new-mown hay, to my radiant companions. The merriment of it, its complexity, its wholesomeness, the delight it gave—all brought to a focus and intensified the interest that was growing within me for Lydia.

But the whole party rose now to begin work on another hillside and Lydia turned to me with:

"Why do you stay with us? Why not go to the Hall? You will find the Pater there; we call him the Pater because he is the father of the settlement. He will want to talk to you, and you need to talk to him." She put an arch little emphasis on the word "need." Evidently she did not want me to be loitering among them. I pretended to adopt her suggestion with alacrity although in my heart I wished nothing but to remain with her.

"Yes," I said, "I shall never get out of my bewilderment unless I talk to some one who can understand my point of view."

"And you will probably find Chairo there," she added, with a provoking smile. "He was to arrive to-day."

Ariston pricked his ear:

"Ah!" he said. "You will enjoy meeting Chairo; he is the leader of our Radical party; he is in favor of all sorts of Radical measures—such as the destruction of the Cult—" the women looked at one another—"the respect of private property——"

"What! Do you call the respect of private property Radical?" asked I. "It was the shibboleth of the Conservatives in my time; they called it the 'sacredness of private property.'"

"Just as the Demetrians speak of the 'sacredness' of the Cult to-day," said Ariston.

"Whenever Hypocrisy wants to preserve an abuse she calls it Sacred," said a strong voice at my elbow. I turned and saw that a new companion had been added to us, and I guessed at once that it was Chairo.

He was a splendid man; nothing was wanting to him—stature, nor beauty, nor strength. He was remarkable, too, by the fact that his face was clean shaved, whereas all the other men I had met wore beards; but his face bore a likeness so striking to that of Augustus that to have hidden it by a beard would have been a desecration. And he was strong enough in mind as well as in muscle to bear being exceptional. It would have been impossible for him to be other than exceptional.

Lydia blushed as she recognized him, and the blush suggested what I most feared to know. Chairo went to her and without a shadow of affectation took her hand, knelt on one knee, and kissed it. There could have been no clearer confession of his love. I could not help contrasting the frankness of this act and the superb humility of it with the reticence, hypocrisy, and pride that characterized our twentieth-century love-making.

Lydia with her disengaged hand made a sign of the cross over his head; not the rapid, timid, fugitive conventional sign that Catholics made in our day, but with her whole arm, a large sign, swinging from above her head to his as it bowed over her hand, with a large sweep afterward across; and as she did so I saw her eyes widen and her glance stretch forward across the heavenly distance.

For the first time I felt the narrowness of my life and my own insignificance. And I—I—had dared to think I could make love to this woman! For a moment it occurred to me that Lydia had encouraged me; but so mean an apprehension of her could not live in her presence. As she stood there making the sign of the cross over the bowed head of her beloved, I knew that Love was something more in this civilization than the satisfaction of a caprice or the banter of good-humored gallantry; that it was possible to make of Love a religion, without for that reason sacrificing the charm of life, and the particular charm that makes the companionship of a woman something different from the companionship of a man.

And yet I was puzzled; was Lydia not a Demetrian? Cleon had told me she had not yet made up her mind; but was there not in this greeting with Chairo a practical admission of a betrothal? And what was the meaning of the sign of the cross? Was Christianity still alive, then? And if so, how reconcile Christ and Demeter? And there swung through my mind the terrible invocation of the poet: "Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean! The world has grown gray from thy breath."

When the cult of Demeter had first been hinted to me I had assumed that the reign of the Galilean was over, and that the old gods had resumed their sway. The possibility of this had admitted a note of latent triumph in the hymn to Proserpine.