A Green Thought

IT all began in a perfectly natural way. Henry and I were first engaged in the quiet and innocuous, though unæsthetic, amusement of seeing howfar we could stick our tongues out, and whose tongue, when thus projected, could be brought to the finest point. Henry out-classed me — by virtue of his greater maturity, I chose to think. He said he could see this fine tip he had achieved, and he certainly could almost touch his nose with it. I was profoundly chagrined, but I covered my mortification as best I could by using my now well-limbered tongue to imply that this sort of preëminence was of a very undesirable quality anyway, and to draw some rather unpleasant parallels. Henry made a retort involving a personal allusion which had nothing to do with the occasion, but was all the more annoying. Our moment of pleasant emulation seemed likely to pass into one of acrimonious difference.

But just at this point Henry’s eye happened to fall upon the brimming plate of fly-poison which Maldy had placed on a window-sill to beguile the gluttonous fly. In its lake of deadly water floated dark gray squares of flypaper, enticingly spread with brown sugar for purposes of allurement, but in reality exuding certain death. At least Maldy cherished the notion that they did. Henry was struck with an idea which for the moment eclipsed disputation.

‘I dare you to see how near you can come to that with your tongue without touching it,” he said.

Now there were two reasons why I should have met this with either silent reproof or virtuous refusal. We were forbidden always by Maldy to ‘near ourselves’ to her poison-plates or to ‘have any doings’ with them. And we were expressly forbidden by the highest authorities either to offer ‘dares’ or to take them. Ever since the day when I had attempted to stand on one foot on the ridge of the granary-roof while Henry counted five hundred, and had failed ignominiously and dangerously, ‘daring’ had been under a ban for us. Henry should not have dared me now and I should not have accepted the challenge. But one who bears daily and hourly the obloquy of not being a boy is especially sensitive on points of honor and courage.

I bent over the plate and experimentally measured the distance. Then I had a second thought.

‘You’re afraid to do it yourself,’ I said.

‘I’m not, either. You go ahead and do it first.’

I was aware of an inconsistency in this, but one can’t be all the time pointing out its illogicalities to masculinity, so I said nothing more. I approached a cautious and oscillating tongue to the mixture. Then Henry, remarking that I had not come within a mile of it, did the same. He did seem to outdo me — again because of his larger proportions, I was sure. My blood was up. Henry never forgot it when he beat me at anything. Once more I bent over the plate, advancing a sensitive and reluctant tongue-tip nearer and nearer the deadly surface. The suggestive opportunity was too great a temptation to Henry — him of the creative imagination. He suddenly ‘bobbed’ my head on the back, and down went nose and chin and out-reaching tongue into the noisome stuff. Moreover, my sudden impact with the plate knocked it off the window-sill and its contents splashed darkly over the floor.

With great presence of mind I remembered that I must not close my mouth or risk swallowing any of the deadly liquid. I snatched Henry’s handkerchief, usually scorned for its complexion, and hastily wiped all the submerged portion. I did n’t know how rapidly the poison would act, but the instinct of self-preservation bade me ward off the final moment as long as possible. There was not the slightest doubt, however, that my end was only a matter of brief time, and that a very few minutes would probably see the tragedy.

I gazed at Henry in a sort of acute stupor and be blinked at me in return, overwhelmed at the result of a perfectly natural act.

In spite of everything, I could not help being aware of the dramatic value of the situation as I stood waiting for the final instant, undesired but doubtless imminent. Unfortunately, the tragic quality of it was modified somewhat by my being obliged to keep my mouth open. I should have liked to tell Henry what I thought of him once for all, before the moment of departure came, but the instinct of precaution forbade articulation. He might at least make partial amends by saying something appropriate now and helping to complete the situation. But he only kept on staring and looking stupid - no adequate behavior under the circumstances.

Then, to add to the annoying commonplaceness of things, Maldy, coming in, spied her cherished fly-poison on the floor. She turned an accusing look on me, and I seemed to be making a face at her. I admit that Maldy did have some reason to be irritated. She gave voice to some very Maldian generalizations and left the room without asking me what was the matter or how I felt. In a minute she came back to gather up the plate and paper and wipe up the spilled water, and to say that she would tell our ‘ fawther.’ Maldy always said ‘ fawther,’ and she could say it, on occasion, so that it seemed to mean a giant fifteen feet high who loved to beat children, the harder the better.

I never liked Maldy less than at the moments when she was saying she would tell our ‘fawther.’ She never did tell any one anything — except when she found us playing with the Puckett children down in the hollow, when she dragged us straight to a reproof which she plainly regarded as inadequate. And she generally made it her business to conceal delinquencies which she herself did not especially condemn. But no one could tell what might happen, and she sometimes gave us uncomfortable moments while we waited for results of her threats. This time, though, I felt less her condemnatory attitude than her lack of sympathy, as she gave a final glare at me and took an angry departure.

Henry, however, looked very uneasy. He sat down uncomfortably on the edge of a rocking-chair and put his hands into his pockets.

‘Would you like my handkerchief again?’ he asked presently, in a conciliatory tone.

I shook my head stonily. Since I could not say anything adequate it did not seem worth while to express myself at all. But, of course, I could not accept his implied apology for poisoning me.

Henry felt in his pockets and took another thought.

‘Have a peppermint?’ he suggested cordially.

Again I shook my head and turned my eyes on the window. Henry weighed the peppermint in his fingers a moment and then ate it himself.

Somewhat cheered by the naturalness of the act, he came back to normal and said, ‘I’ll bet it won’t hurt at all.’

This was insulting. I would n’t fail to die now for anything. An empty pause followed.

My mother came through the room. I had been hoping she would. That chance would afford a natural way of breaking the news.

But all she said was, ‘Close your mouth, dear. That is n’t nice.’

And she went out.

That was the last straw. I had been supposing that my mother would feel the situation instinctively, as she always did. Her imperception was a disappointment. I had already begun to take a sort of poignant enjoyment out of a vision I was rapidly constructing, of a final scene, with all the family present, and the repentant Maldy and Henry receiving the cold shoulders of all the others. Evidently I should have to reconstruct that gratifying view.

I closed my mouth with a snap, and took my sunbonnet, a convention of dress that I ignored as often as possible. Henry rose with a relieved air, pleased that, the unusual and embarrassing situation had come to an end.

‘Want, to get out the pony?’ he asked sociably.

But I said impassively, ‘No,’ and went on my way.

There did n’t seem to be any use in dying, if one were n’t going to get any more out of it than this. And still I did n’t like to give up the idea. Anyway, I was sure I was going to die, whether I wanted to or not. I would just have to make the most of it on my own account, and have it, like other large experiences, all to myself. One more possibility remained. My father was coming toward the house, and I directed my steps so as to cross his path. He ought at least to have a chance, on such an occasion as this. But all he did was to say, noticing the direction in which I seemed to be going, ‘Don’t eat any of those cherries yet, daughter. They won’t be ripe enough for another week.’

I had to wait a moment before I could say my obedient ‘Yes, sir.’ And there was so much that I might have said if I could have brought myself to do it ! This was more than a disappointment. It was a blow. I could have cried had not pride forbidden. To have it thought that I was after green cherries when I already had flypoison in my system! It was my first really profound trial of having a great experience belittled, and it cut deep.

I wandered out to where the mover was buried, and sat down. I did n’t choose the spot, but it seemed to lie in my way and I paused to consider its appropriateness as a place for meditation. This was our nearest approach to knowledge of a graveyard, but it had always seemed inadequate in every way, and quite devoid of sentimental suggestion. The real pathos of the forgotten grave on a stranger’s land seemed lost on every one except my mother, who sent us to put flowers on it on Memorial Day, and had a man renew the wooden slab from time to time. But I think my father rather regretted the kindliness which had allowed it to be placed there. Scattered bits of blue-grass from the carefully cherished growth on the lawn struggled with the prairie-grass which still held these outskirts, and a spare yellow blossom of Indian blood-root, as we erroneously called it, lent a scanty bit of grace of its kind. But the atmosphere of the spot was too commonplace to be effective. We children had raced by it too often to have any feeling connected with it at all, any more than any other place. I looked at it now with a vague notion of sympathy, but for the moment I was more interested in dying than in being dead.

So, finding nothing companionable here, I rose and wandered on down the road. One of the men passed me, driving on a hay-rack, and I caught on behind and balanced myself neatly, though abstractedly, on the projecting end of the reach. We jolted along down to the farm gate and up the road a little way. Then the man turned into a field. It was only a wheat-field, where no entertainment promised, or solace for a doomed one, so I jumped off and stopped on the road.

I did n’t know what I wanted to do next. The lack of sympathy and of understanding which had been shown me within the last hour gave me a vague feeling of detachment from my family and from everything else. I did n’t see anything to do out on the road, but at the same time I did n’t see anything to do anywhere. I looked up and down along the line of yellow wagon-track, with the sparse prairiegrass and the immigrating weeds forming its border. The road toward town and the more thickly-settled country to the east of us, was quite familiar to me in all its scanty detail, and now promised no new interest. In the other direction it led away, past, my father’s land and past an unpainted, ruststreaked farm-house or two, and then on across a piece of open prairie. I had heard my father and other men complain because its eastern owners did not have this land broken up and settled, but I did not know how extensive it was, and I had never been at all curi ous about it or what lay beyond it,for I had no great faith in its possibilities.

But when one is being shaken out of relationship to all normal things by a new experience, one prefers the unknown to the known. So, without any special choosing, I began to loiter along the road to the prairie, in a large indif ference to coming results. I heard the creak and rattle of a wagon behind me and settled my pace to a steady trudge, so that I might seem to have business on the highway. The wagon and came nearer, overtook me, passed me,and I looked up, to see that it was an emi grant wagon, with the dusty, weathered canvas top and the bony, tired team that, always belonged with the emi grant wagon, and the usual dog under the wagon and the extra horse nibbling along behind.

We were expressly forbidden to have anything to do with movers; but what is law to one set apart as I was them I promptly caught on behind, holding to the edge of the feed-box which was always attached to the back of a mover-wagon. The dog sniffed at me a little, but he was such a limp,skinny dog that I ventured to kick at him haughtily, and he curved himself side ways and slunk up nearer to the horses and said nothing more about it. The blank canvas cover showed no eye watching me, and the heavy wagon moved stolidly along as if following a dull purpose of its own. It became rather amusing to think that I was making use of it, and its unseen owners did not even know that I was there Merely keeping up with the slow horses did not take all my energy and,forgetting my precarious physical condition, I hopped on one foot and then on the other and jumped up to try to see in through the canvas, and hooked my elbows over the edge of the feed-box and dragged my toes in the dust, looking over my shoulder to see what sort of track I was making. I began to have a pretty good time.

I really meant to quit and go back home soon, for, after all, the entertainment of this was easily exhausted. But all at once a voice above me said, ‘Want a ride, little girl?’ and there was a mover-woman looking at me through the opening in the canvas, at the back.

Somewhat to my own surprise I promptly answered, ‘Yes.’

I should hardly have supposed I would have ventured to do so, but having made the daring decision I rather respected myself for my courage and stood by it. The wagon stopped with a slow creak and somebody held back a flap of the canvas at the side, while I climbed up by means of the wheel and the clumsy brake, and effected an entrance between the wobbly hoops that supported the cover. I was very prim and sedate as I scrambled in, head first, and took a seat on the pile of bedding the woman pointed me to, but inwardly I was all agog. This was the most exciting thing that had happened to me for many a day — more so even than the fly-poison.

I naturally had a momentary feeling of triumph over Henry as I smoothed down my skirt and placed my feet carefully, to avoid putting them into any of the utensils which were toppling about. I had a fleeting thought of the effectiveness with which I would tell him about it, a vision which made it desirable to live to return home. The movers and the mover-wagons had always had a mystery that belonged to no other people or things we knew. They were so strange, in their eternal going and going, carrying all their possessions with them as they moved, like people without the ordinary ties of life. We had often tried to get a glimpse into the dim well of their wagons, but had never succeeded to our satisfaction.

And now the chance was bestowed on me — not on Henry or John. I tried to hold my curiosity in leash as I looked about me, so as not to see everything at once and thus gloss over the effect. I fixed my attention on one thing at a time, slowly staring at each object— from the lank, hairy man on the seat in front, to the mangy gray cat sleeping on the bag of corn-meal at the end of the wagon-bed—while the woman on her part stared at me.

I had never seen so many things, it seemed to me. All the necessities of living — if one wanted to live under these conditions — had been thrown together into this narrow, low-arched space. The mussy bedding where I was perched, and the trunk where the woman sat holding the baby, and the box where the little boy lay asleep, were only the substructure or nuclei for bundles and boxes and bags and rolls, all more or less dilapidated, and disclosing commonplace and uninviting contents, like side-meat or dried beef or soiled clothes. Among those were other articles, no less commonplace — old shoes and pans and a jug or two and a tin wash-basin and a skillet bearing traces of a recent dinner. Things hung from the canvas cover and menaced our heads as they swung about. A boot-jack lay among the other objects, and I wondered if it were really a necessary article to take along on such a trip.

All the time I was looking, the moverwoman was looking at me. She sat opposite me, her toes touching mine, although I tried to screw away as far as possible. She had a brown face and little winking black eyes, and she wore a limp, gray calico dress. She wanted to know a great many things. I had never met any one with so amazing an appetite for unmeaning facts. She wanted to know my name and where I lived, and whether my pa and ma were both living, and how many brothers and sisters I had and their order of succession, and how much land my pa had and whether it was all paid for or had a mortgage on it, and whether he had made the money himself or had a legacy — she pronounced it lēgacy and I did n’t know what she meant, but I said no anyway — and where my pa and ma lived before they came here, and whether they liked it here, and what was the price of land, and whether my ma had right smart of chickens this year, and whether we ate our fries or sold them. She felt the texture of my gingham dress between her crooked finger and thumb and asked how much it was a yard, and if my ma made it, and if she had the pattern of my sunbonnet, and if I could cook, and if I had pieced a quilt.

That was only a part of what she asked me. Sometimes her phrases were strange to me, but I felt bound to answer, anyway. I wondered, in an uneasy way, whether she were polite. And, unlike most grown-ups who had conversed with me, she seemed to expect an answer to every question and made no allowance for either shyness or ignorance. When she talked she forgot to keep the flies off the baby, and they buzzed about its poor little eyes and mouth. The little boy had gone to sleep in the midst of eating a cold pancake spread with molasses, and the uneaten and forgotten half had dropped from his sleepy fingers and lay on the quilt beside him. It, too, as well as his molasses-streaked little face, was visited by many flies, crawling stickily on their besmeared legs.

My curiosity about movers was waning. It did not seem now as if there could be anything interesting about people like these. Even the Pucketts were more likable. They told me things instead of always asking questions. I had wanted tremendously to ask the woman about herself, but I did n’t know how to begin. And, after all, it did n’t seem worth while to find out about a woman who did n’t keep the flies off her children. I felt very uncomfortable in telling how many acres my father had and how many dresses I had myself, but how could I help answering her when she stopped and looked at me with her bright black eyes and worked her mouth in that nervous way?

I did n’t know what to do. Home had suddenly become very attractive. I had had chance dreams sometimes of riding off in a mover-wagon to a land of new experience, but I never could have imagined that the unknown contents of the wagon included flies and unwashed skillets and women who worked their mouths that way and asked questions. I found nothing bookish or romantic in it . I wished I were back home, but I did n’t know how to get away.

The slouching man on the wagonseat suddenly helped me by asking abruptly, ‘How fur you goin’, sis?’

I raised the flap of the cover and looked out. We had passed far beyond the last of the dreary farm-houses, and straight before me, to the south, lay the open prairie. There was nothing else in view, house or fence or road. But I said promptly, ‘I want to get out right here.’

And, without waiting even for the man to bring his slow horses to a stop, I was out, with my foot on the brake, and jumped to the ground. Both man and woman looked after me curiously. I paused to say politely, ‘Thank you very much for the ride,’ and then set off straight into the prairie, as if I had urgent business there. As soon as the wagon was out of sight I would turn round and follow the road toward home, now grown desirable, poison or no poison.

The road here lay along a side-hill, and in front of me the prairie sloped up for a few rods, to the hill-top. I walked straight up the little ascent, so conscious of looks following me that I scarcely noticed what was before me until I had dipped over the crest of the hill. Then, out of sight of the wagon, and relieved of the embarrassment of watching eyes, I stopped suddenly and began to see.

For a moment I could do nothing but see. I scarcely breathed or consciously felt. I only looked. A long, long, irregular valley lay before me, with hill-slopes cutting down into it occasionally from each side. It all spread out in gentle curves, with soft risings and slow descents, and it was all, all clothed in the rare full green of the prairie-grass, which lay over the hill-tops and deepened into the valleys, and made every line and curve of the landscape soft with grace and willingly tender. The south wind came up into my face as I stood. It seemed to be at work enriching all I saw. It made the grass buoyant with windy ripples on its green surface. It bent the blades curvewise, until the sun glinted on their sides and the hills shone in places with gold in their green. Down in the hollow, where the rich slough-grass grew high, it made deep waves, with lovely shadings from pale to dark. It died away softly to a mere stirring and then back with a sudden joyful gust, and mingled rhythmic movement with the sweet quiet of all that lay before me.

An occasional flower raised its head: not many, only enough to enliven the color of the grass. There were the red sweet-william and the prairie-pea and the wild verbena, and others whose names I did not know, and never would know, since they went away with the prairie and never came back. Here and there the green was dotted with sturdy nigger-heads,’ with their rich mahogany centres and faintly pink fringes.

When at last I stirred from my little trance and drew a long happy breath of absorption, my hand dropped on one of these as I stood there, and without looking at it I clasped the whole top in my small fist, squeezing the prickles of the cushiony centre hard against the sensitive place in my palm. I knew the nigger-head well. It had neither romance nor mystery, and was as unsympathetic a creation as could go by the name of flower. But now its familiarity and its uncomfortable prickliness, as I stood holding it, seemed to form a tether to all the practical familiar things outside of this green vista. And this sub-consciousness of other things made all that was before me seem the more exquisite. But soon I loosed my hold on it and moved a little farther down the slope. There again I stood to look and look, following curve after curve of the green, where it stretched off to the south, rising over a hill and dipping into a valley, and finally climbing a last slope to reach the mysterious thing that was the horizon line.

I can’t tell what strangeness lay in the line of wonder where the blue of the sky met the green of the hills. It was a mystery which far transcended in remoteness and promise any pot of gold of any childish tradition. That line itself held my attention. I had never before found myself where I could follow the full sweep of it all round. Now I revolved slowly, tracing the long ellipse which inclosed the narrow valley, lifting itself over the crest of a hill or dropping into a soft curve at the head of a draw. The completeness of the line fascinated me and I followed it round twice. I had never imagined it thus unbroken. I looked from the green to the blue and back again, and then at the fine definition of line where they met.

For once I had no wonder as to what lay beyond that line, in either the green or the blue. The completeness and simplicity of what the horizon bounded set it off into a world by itself — a whole world, but so simple. And I was the only person in it.

I had never before been alone in any such degree as this. To be sure, there had been pleasant afternoons in the orchard, and surreptitious hours in the granary or barn-loft, in company with a forbidden book. But that was not complete isolation. At any moment some one might call me, or Henry or John, or both of them, might appear. Brothers have an energetic pervasiveness which makes any retirement insecure. A possibility, if not an actuality, intruded on every such moment and interfered with absolute solitude.

But here was a real aloneness, a solitude that was almost tangible, and — I discovered — an exquisite, an adorable thing. It made everything mine, in a way I had never known before and could n’t realize completely enough for my satisfaction now. Even my self seemed more mine than it ever had, at those times when some one might break in at any moment with an outside demand upon me. I dropped down into the grass, forgetting all about my intention of going home. ‘A green thought ’ — I began to myself, for there is great pleasure in applying a bit of poetry when there is no one else round. ‘A green thought ’— But the rest of the phrase would not fit, and I had to let poetry lapse for the time and merely look and listen, allowing the prairie to define itself.

A sort of noiseless sound lived through the stillness, a sound which had no beginning, and which could never have an ending, one would think. It was made up of everything there — the wind and the grass and the faintly sounding water in the tiny hidden creek among the slough-grass, and all the little lives among the green growth. I could almost believe, as I raised my eyes, that the softly-departing clouds had a part in it, so gentle and continuous was the sound. It seemed to be just a tender vocalization of mere living. When a bird’s call dropped into it sometimes, it was only a phrase that melted into all the rest.

Listening seemed only to make looking all the more intent. This was a landscape, for this moment at least, completely satisfying. Here was no great variety to draw the eye from detail to detail in a way that interfered with mood and forbade absorption. It was a whole eye-full, of only the two elements, the green of the grass and the blue of the sky. Either would have been enough for man’s desire. The two were riches beyond grasping. The sky was noble, now absolutely cloudless, a great half-globe of blue. It deepened from the lighter rim, where it seemed to come near to the horizon, to the exquisite remoteness straight above me, where the blue became bluer the longer I looked into it. Golden-blue I called it to myself, as I dwelt upon it.

I sprang to my feet and ran, my sunbonnet thrown back on my shoulders, so that I might feel the moving softness of the south wind in my face, and my arms spread wide as if to grasp all I saw. If any one had been there to see me I could not have done it. But for once a world was my own. The wind seemed to be bringing the grass toward me, in a constant motion, and I ran to meet it. I ran and ran, in a sort of ecstasy of all I realized of the place, the prairie wind in my hair, the prairie-grass about my feet, the prairie sun in my eyes. Every minute was an adventure in life.

There is no time in a place like that. After a while I began to notice that the sunlight, sloping down the western hill, was catching the tops of the grasses instead of penetrating among them. Then there came a little indistinctness on the horizon line and a milky haziness in the farther end of the valley. But I put off thinking of the meaning of these things or deciding what I should do next. It seemed to me that if I went out of this place I could never come back. This day was different from all other days. Home and everything else were remote from this valley of grasses.

A shout — two shouts — broke across the continuity of sweet sound in my ears. I looked behind me and saw two figures on horseback, one on the edge of the hill-top and the smaller one nearer, moving toward me. They were my father and Henry, both standing in their stirrups and scanning the landscape. My first impulse was to keep still, and I sat unresponsive. But Henry had not helped to hunt cattle on the prairie for nothing. He turned and whistled shrilly to my father, who settled down in his saddle and waited, while Henry came dashing up to me. Relief was plainly evident in his face, but he was not too much absorbed to put the pony through a mild imitation of bucking as he approached. Indignation succeeding to anxiety was apparent in his tone as he demanded,

‘What in Sam are you doing out here?’

’I thought I would take a walk,’ I answered with quiet dignity as I rose and shook out the skirt of my dress.

‘Well, you’d better walk back home for a walk, and it’s four miles.’

It was plainly a relief to Henry to find me on the wrong side again. I surmised that the story of the flypoison had been divulged, and found my own poise. With calm assurance I ignored him and walked straight up to where my father waited.

He said only, ‘All right, daughter?’ and drew me up on the horse behind him, and we cantered off home, Henry and the pony trailing along in the rear.

I did n’t look back as we went along. But I laid my cheek up against my father’s shoulder, as I held fast to him, and shut my eyes. And I could still see and see and see the moving green of the prairie-grass and the golden-blue of the sky.