The Fertile Hand

IF you knew Deirdre, you would understand what I am going to tell you of her. As it is — no, you cannot scoff; explain it as you will, the thing is true.

She has her name from the splendid heroic woman of Irish saga; but there is about her no breath of the divinity of the ancient Blessed Ones; she is rather of the “little people of the hills,” who are all that is left to the world in place of those glorious spirits of old. Deirdre is frail of look, and moves like a reed in the wind, and you hear scarcely more of her footstep. Her hair is like corn frosted before the harvest, and her eyes are like the water of clear streams running over gray shale. And although she is no longer young, there is always upon her face the light of one who has known the fairies.

We often sit over the fire together — two lonely women in London; and sometimes she speaks of the strange things that befell her when she was still at home in Ireland. One evening, when she was in the mood, she told me of the Fertile Hand.

“ I have it myself,” says she, and glances keenly to see whether I must be numbered among the unbelievers.

“ Well ?” I saved myself.

“Yes, and it brings blessings to other people all the time, but to myself — I never mind that at all! I can’t remember the beginning of it. I know I had it when we went to live at Killemara, dad and I. There was a shabby old house, and a garden that made you shiver — it was so full of decay. The first thing I saw in it was a fat grinning toad; and if it had n’t been Ireland, you would have known there were adders among the stones of the rockery. The weeds were simply mobbing all the beds, — stinging nettles and docks and ugly, speckly things that were strange to me. There were some broken vases and a statue that had been blown over; and the ground everywhere had a settled mouldy look, as if nobody had turned it up for generations, and it had been quite given over to the dark things of the earth. . . .

“ We could n’t afford a gardener, and dad was too lame to hobble about much. He had just his pension then. He sat among his books and smoked; and I, when old Biddy - Bid was cross, — I would n’t stay in the stuffy house where I was afraid of my own footsteps in the passages, — I went out into the garden and dug.”

She stopped and reddened her slender little fingers against the flame, while I had a brief vision of a spidery, spindly child, bathed in yellow hair, struggling with a nettle-bed.

“You won’t believe me,” she continued serenely, “ but at the end of the summer that garden was a village wonder. And I was just nine years old. I could n’t have done much; but all the old things that had lain in the earth forgotten for years cropped up and blossomed.”

“The ground needed a stirring,” quoth I.

“No doubt,” she assented, with a dim smile.

“You planted seeds?”

“They all grew. And others were there that I had not sown. The village people used to come in and look; and when they saw me they always shook their heads.

“It was Pat Ryan, I think, who first asked if I might come to help him with his sowing. I walked up and down the furrows, and I scattered some of the grain. He was talking all the while, but it was in the Irish, and I cannot tell what he said. Anyway, he had the biggest crop of any farmer for miles around, — such a crop as nobody had seen the like of for seven years.

“After that I went to many a sowing, and I planted the praties weeks without end. And all the people in Killemara were running after me to bring the luck upon them, till at the last, when even the hens would not lay, ’t was I must go and touch them all to bring the blessing. And once, when Molly O’Shane had lost her baby that she and Tim had prayed seven years to get — I was walking along the road when I heard the crying of women from the house, and one of them came out and brought me in, though I was frightened and drew back. But they took me up to Molly, where she sat turning over her apron with never a word nor a tear, and I — I touched her.”

“And was it lucky?” I asked, as Deirdre sank into a dream.

“Lucky? What? Who?” she exclaimed, starting up; and then she remembered what she had been saying. “Oh, Molly! She screamed and pushed me so hard that I fell and scraped my knee on the mud floor; I walked lame all the way home, I remember. And she cried out that it would never be the same at all, at all; but then she fell a-sobbing and it was better with her. And nine months after — to a day, mind you — there came another baby. It was a wonder— just; but I cannot tell you how it happened.”

There fell a silence between us; but at length I asked: “And was that the only time you ever touched a woman ?”

She turned her face away, and I felt rather than saw that the tears were falling as softly and swiftly and silently as one of her own Irish showers.

“No,” she whispered, and while I mentally cursed my blundering tongue, she added: “I will tell you about it.”

“Not if you”— I protested.

“ I do want to. There’s no reason why it should always be kept sealed — least of all from you. I — besides — I was happy in it — I am happy — as happy as only an old woman can be.”

She leaned forward and the firelight touched rosily all the frosted hairs in the yellow web.

“He — you must not ask his name, because — well, you can see his pictures in the Academy every year, and the nation has bought two. I — we used to go sketching together. He came to Killemara when I was a slip of a girl, dreaming dreams of how I was to go out into the world and do great things. I painted then. My father said I had a sense of color, but —I could not draw. And he said I had vision. Perhaps I had, but it did not take the place of technique when I came over to London and tried to sell my pictures. While he was there, I liked better to let him do all the painting, while I told him my visions. They sold well — some of them — afterwards: there was the Lake-Fairy on a Water Lily and the Sphinx of the Pool of Killemara, and there was the Ring of Monks that danced round an apple tree, tipped with the flames of hell, that grew in their cloister.”

“Oh,” said I, “that means” —

“Don’t guess,” says she, “and don’t ask. It was so long ago. What does it matter? . . . Well, he went away to London, and the winter was long; and then in the summer he came, and the days were on wings. For three years he came and went — and we were very good friends. Then, one day — it was wet and he was painting me, just me by the old kitchen fireplace at home — he suddenly told me that he would be married within a little while.

“I sat perfectly still — he was doing my face just then — and when I was allowed to speak I told him how glad I was.

“And then he said, ‘Next week she is coming with her mother to see my dear Killemara. Will you be kind to her?’

“ I tried — I tried to be kind to her, but I have never hated any one so much. She was beautiful, as I never was, and she dressed always as she should, while I, in my patched cotton frocks, had to cover up the holes in the carpet with old rugs, and to count out whether there were enough cups and saucers that matched for tea. It was bitter, for she was rich.

“ I could understand, oh so easily, how he came to love her. She had all the pretty ways that make men mad; and even though they were engaged, she still drew him on, and held him off, and made believe with others and all, until he was fairly out of his wits with love for her. But she did not trouble much about me, and I sometimes wondered . . . He asked me once for praise for her, and I said — truly — that I had never seen such a woman.

“ It was the second summer after they were married that my father died. Then, you know, I came to London to do — oh, what is it that we will do when we are young ? Do we ever really know ? ”

“But ” — I protested. She was getting very far from the Fertile Hand.

“I — I’m coming to it. It is n’t altogether easy to tell. After my seven years or so of hope and despair, I settled down on my little income just to be a contented old maid. Yes, I — I went early to see him in his studio; and once or twice he painted me. Not often. I could not go too often. And by degrees I found out that they were unhappy. His face told me at once, though he said never a word of it, or against her. Then, one day, I found them together quarreling, and he could not hide it from me. And another time she was angry and spoke bitterly against him. How I hated her! I used to shut my eyes sometimes just to fancy the joy of stabbing her to death. I could have done it, too; but I remembered him in time and how he would suffer by the scandal and all . . .

“ Though I hated her so, I could not even then think her a wicked woman exactly. She was only spoiled, exacting, and jealous and selfish, — not such terrible sins in the eyes of the world. She could not understand his love for his art. To her, painting was nothing more than a livelihood, and she thought that while she had the money and was willing to supply it — Well, she hindered him all she could. The two years that they had been married when I came to London he had done no good work at all, — only silly little decorative pieces. As I watched from week to week how it was going, how he grew more and more discouraged and pessimistic, I was fairly wild. I would have given everything I had or hoped to have to save him, but I could find no way. The woman was so abominably healthy and she gave him no legal cause for a divorce. One can’t long be as miserable as I was then — not long and five. . . .

“But there was no way, dear; there really was none. I had just to stand by and see him go down — down . . . and his splendid gift shriveling up — through her fault,

“ I could not be sorry for her — not even one day when I came into the studio and found her alone in a passion of tears. I don’t know why she — told me—except that it was too late to conceal her unhappiness. All the while I hated every word she spoke; only— that did not mend his case.

“ I sat down and tried to reason with her. Poor thing! — I can say it now. Then I had only contempt for the folly that was spoiling both their lives. I talked for him — for his career; and when I had no more breath, I knew that I was just where I began. She did not see. I don’t think she even listened. So many women come to shipwreck there. Ah, when love is all the world to them, they cannot understand. . . .

“I found my hand upon her forehead. I did n’t mean to put it there. I did not know — I hated her — and yet somehow the thing was done. We sat very still, and she presently fell asleep; so he came in upon us.”

I thought she had lost the thread of her story altogether; but at last she said softly, —

“It was just a miracle.”

“Do you mean”— I sat up in my chair.

She nodded. “ It came. I did not mean to do it, but it came. It was the way.”

I shook my head, an unwilling skeptic.

“You do not believe me?” she said, smiling. “ Well, I suppose nobody would. But it’s true.”

I pondered, knowing her to be wholly honest.

“ It was not that she herself changed so much; but now that she has children, the dear things keep the peace. And soon — soon he began to paint again. He is a great man. Not wasted. And she is still abominably healthy; but — I don’t mind.”

“And you think you wrought the miracle?” I could not help asking.

“Not I,” she said at once. “The way of It is just to bring the blessing unawares.”

The Fertile Hand — her faith in it was unshakable. . . .

She answered my thought: “There are some people who think they understand the world. I find it hard. But some things I know without any telling.”

“But you yourself, Deirdre?” I began to urge.

“Ah, that’s the way of the gift,” she laughed. “He that hath it, lacks. His joy must come of the giving.”

“And yours” —

She would not let me finish. “Just,” she said quietly, and went away from me to stand at my table by the window.

“Oh, don’t look at those shriveled roses! ” I exclaimed. “I forgot to throw them away this morning.”

“Poor things!” says she, and touches them with light and loving fingers. “ You should see my room now, dear; it’s a perfect hospital for decrepit and disabled plants, collected from my neighbors. But the patients are all doing nicely, thank you. As for Mrs. Bateson’s ferns, on the top floor, I have to keep them two months out of every quarter. At the end of the odd month regularly they come down looking sick to death; but in a day or two they brighten up and look almost happy ... I must be going. Please don’t remember about my hand, since you can’t believe. I don’t want to think of you among the scoffers.”

I had no intention of scoffing, be sure. When she had gone, I went over to my table to write. Really, the roses were not so bad, — what had she been doing? I bent over and touched them; the petals were almost fresh and — and, yes — fragrant!

Then I took up my pen and wrote this. Do you scoff ?