The Brimming Cup. Dorothy Canfield Fisher
sometimes, that I'm in something awfully big and irresistible like a great river, flowing somewhere; but I've never felt it in waking hours. I wish I could. It's lovely in dreams. You evidently do, even awake."
He said, confidently, "You will, later on."
She ventured, "You mean, maybe, that I'm so shaken up by the little surface waves, chopping back and forth, that I don't feel the big current."
"It's there. Whether you feel it or not," he made final answer to her doubt.
She murmured, "I wonder if there is anything in that silly, old-fashioned notion that men are stronger than women, and that women must lean on men's strength, to live?"
"Everybody's got to lean on his own strength, sooner or later," he told her with a touch of grimness.
"You just won't be romantic!" she cried admiringly.
"I really love you, Marise," he answered profoundly; and on this rock-like assurance she sank down with a long breath of trust.
The sun was dipping into the sea now, emblazoning the sky with a last flaming half-circle of pure color, but the light had left the dusky edges of the world. Already the far mountains were dimmed, and the plain, passing from one deep twilight color to another more somber, was quietly sinking into darkness as into the strong loving arms of ultimate dissolution.
The girl spoke in a dreamy twilight tone, "Neale dear, this is not a romantic idea … honestly, I do wish we could both die right here and never go down to the plain any more. Don't you feel that? Not at all?"
His voice rang out, resonant and harsh as a bugle-note, "No, I do not, not at all, not for a single moment. I've too much ahead of me to feel that. And so have you!"
"There comes the cable-car, climbing up to get us," she said faintly. "And we will go down from this high place of safety into that dark plain, and we will have to cross it, painfully, step by step. Dare you promise me we will not lose our way?" she challenged him.
"I don't promise you anything about it," he answered, taking her hand in his. "Only I'm not a bit afraid of the plain, nor the way that's before us. Come along with me, and let's see what's there."
"Do you think you know where we are going, across that plain?" she asked him painfully; "even where we are to try to go?"
"No, I don't know, now," he answered undismayed. "But I think we will know it as we go along because we will be together."
The darkness, folding itself like a velvet mantle about the far mountains, deepened, and her voice deepened with it. "Can you even promise that we won't lose each other there?" she asked somberly.
At this he suddenly took her into his arms, silently, bending his face to hers, his insistent eyes bringing hers up to meet his gaze. She could feel the strong throbbing of his heart all through her own body.
She clung to him as though she were drowning. And indeed she felt that she was. Life burst over them with a roar, a superb flooding tide on whose strong swelling bosom they felt themselves rising, rising illimitably.
The sun had now wholly set, leaving to darkness the old, old plain, soaked with humanity.
CHAPTER II
INTERLUDE
March 15, 1920.
8:30 A.m.
Marise fitted little Mark's cap down over his ears and buttoned his blue reefer coat close to his throat.
"Now you big children," she said, with an anxious accent, to Paul and Elly standing with their school-books done up in straps, "be sure to keep an eye on Mark at recess-time. Don't let him run and get all hot and then sit down in the wind without his coat. Remember, it's his first day at school, and he's only six."
She kissed his round, smooth, rosy cheek once more, and let him go. Elly stooped and took her little 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,