Ainslee's Magazine/The Woman With a Past/Through June
VIII.—THROUGH JUNE.
... Well for those who live through June!
Great noontides, thunderstorms, all glaring pomps
That triumph at the heels of June the god,
Leading his revel through our leafy world.—Pippa Passes.
SHE was a very small girl, sitting on a rather nubbly hillock of pasture grass, and surveying the universe from an angle that any one could see was quite unsatisfactory. From where she sat she could get only a glimpse of Wild Water—the one swift stream in the vicinity; her view of Lesbane Heights was obstructed by a grove already half destroyed by a last winter's lumber gang; and the meadow in which she had settled herself was bare both of clover and daisy. The outlook was unpromising, yet she sat there—rather phlegmatically, it is true—and looked around and around, as if she expected something to appear suddenly—something for which she had been waiting.
The hour was barely five, on a mid-summer morning. The meadow grass was heavy with dew, and the birds were chattering together in every tree at the edge of the field. Whoever thinks that a summer dawning is a time of peace should get up and go out into the wet, warm, sweet, talkative world for an hour—then he would know better.
Some one beside the small girl was abroad that delicious morning of the very first day in June—a woman, tall and graceful, dressed in filmy white, and carrying a rose-red parasol, against the menace of the coming sun. Her hair was red, too—not golden red, but red with claret tints in it, dark, and yet shining, oddly glistening hair even in that faint, early-morning light. Her face was pale and full of dreams. When the light grew fuller, one would be able to see that her eyes were purple gray.
She walked slowly across the meadow with the dragging, yet restless, step of one who is used to much useless walking and pacing to escape herself, and came suddenly upon the little girl sitting on the dewy hillock in the middle of the meadow.
They regarded each other gravely. Mrs. Carpenter always treated children as her equals in intelligence, and her superiors in inspiration. She noted that the small girl was dark and pale, and looked both wistful and sedate.
“Good morning,” said Pippa simply.
“Are you a fairy?” demanded the small girl, raising large, solemn, dark eyes to the vision. There was a very faint hint of hope in the little face, which, however, was quickly quenched. “No,” she averred, with resignation. “You aren't a fairy. You wear a frilly thing at your neck like Aunt Helen.”
“And how do you know,” asked Philippa Carpenter seriously, “that fairies don't wear frilly things at their necks?”
“Because,” returned the child, with equal seriousness, “Bridget says they wear green clothes and red caps, and some of them just scamper about the hills loike ha-ares”—unconsciously she imitated the brogue in which she had just heard the phrase—“and some of them have—wings!”
“Do you know,” said Pippa confidentially, “it's very nice to find some one who knows so much about fairies as you do.”
The large, dark eyes looked vaguely surprised.
“I don't know,” said the small girl.
“Some people, you know,” proceeded Mrs. Carpenter, “don't even believe in them!”
“I don't either,” said the small girl, in rather a dreary way. “I just told you what Bridget said.”
“But—but” Pippa was puzzled. “You came out here to see them, didn't you?”
The small girl considered.
“Not exactly,” she said, in her quaintly precise English; “I thought they couldn't be, you know, or they would be in Miss Barney's lesson books. But father always says you shouldn't believe or not believe a thing till you've 'vestigated it yourself.”
It was the first word she had stumbled over. Pippa regarded her with amused tenderness.
“Do you mind telling me your name?” she asked respectfully.
“June Garston.”
“What a pretty name! And how old are you, June Garston?”
“Eight.”
Pippa suppressed an exclamation of surprise. The child was so tiny that she might easily have passed for five.
“And why don't you believe in fairies, June?” asked Philippa gently.
“Because I have never seen any,” said June sedately. “And because father has never seen any. And because Miss Barney has never seen any. And because Aunt Helen”
The list bade fair to be interminable, so Mrs. Carpenter interposed hastily:
“But Bridget—surely Bridget has seen some!”
June shook her head.
“No,” she said, “she hasn't. But she believes in them.”
“And can't you believe without seeing, little June?” said Pippa softly.
“No,” said June Garston, still sitting on her hillock, “I have to see, my own self.”
Pippa felt a pang of anger against the child's family, who were bringing her up without the divine comfort and inspiration of faith in things.
“Shan't we take a walk together?” suggested the woman. “See, the sun is quite warm and bright now! And, perhaps, we might find a fairy ring!”
The child rose, and trotted politely by her side over the meadow down to a fringe of birches that skirted the Wild Water. Beyond, farther up the stream, the trees grew thicker, and the scent of wet leaves and grass was intoxicating. And Pippa began to talk about fairies. She had not thought of such things for many years, having a life barren of the riches that come from close intimacy with little children.
But she began to talk, and it was as if the Elfin People themselves drew close in their cloaks invisible to whisper their arguments into her ears. For she spoke of the fairies as only a few rare souls on earth can speak—intimately and with the authority of understanding. She told June of the sprites that slide down the long silver moonbeams at night, bearing dreams to leave on the pillows of sleeping children; of gossamer-winged goblins that make the fairy rings with their dancing, and lure good men from the road into marsh and thicket in a mood of pure mischief; of gnomes that delve in the black earth for gold and gems more wonderful than any ever seen by human eyes; of seafolk with shimmering, scaly tails, and coral wreaths in their green hair; of
“Oh!” gasped June, when Pippa paused to put up her sunshade.
“So you like to hear about the fairies, even if you don't believe in them?” said Philippa mischievously.
“I think they are nicer than the French kings or the ab'rigines,” she asserted soberly; these lesson-book beings having obviously been her favorites heretofore.
“Oh, please,” she went on, in a little, breathless rush, “would you mind telling father about them? He'd be so int'rested!”
“Does he like fairies?” asked Pippa.
“No, but he is always open to new 'pressions,” said June Garston seriously.
“And your mamma, dear?”
“I have no mamma,” said June, without sentiment. “When I started to be, she stopped.”
The queerness of the phrase startled Pippa, but there was much about June Garston that she found startling, and also very lovable.
“Oh!” exclaimed June Garston suddenly, and actually forgot her prim manners sufficiently to seize Mrs. Carpenter's hand, “there is father now! He's very 'pendant on his walk before breakfast.”
The next moment they had met Mr. Garston fairly, and June had presented her new friend with the dignity of eighty, instead of eight.
“Father,” she said, “this is a nice lady, who knows about fairies. I think you ought to hear about them!”
The two older people smiled as they bowed. Both succeeded in disguising the fact that they were slightly startled by the meeting.
Mr. Garston was a man of fifty or more, with sternly set lips that had a way of quivering now and again as if some winged soul, gentler than his exterior, were trying to fly out from behind the barriers set up by his grave will.
If his first instinct was to stiffen, he—or something in Mrs, Carpenter—conquered it. For—albeit a little vaguely—he invited her quite courteously to join them at breakfast.
At another moment Philippa would never have dreamed of accepting, but her heart yearned over little June. Some one should talk to her father.
“I'll have breakfast with you gladly,” she said, and they set out toward the Garston place, high on a grassy hill overlooking Wild Water.
The morning sun had poured a golden elixir into all things that first day of June. The grass and foliage were more vivid, the sky more brilliant, than wont. And something of the sunshine's magic followed its radiance like a secret spell. Little June had become a pixy, skipping nimbly over the rough places in the way. Mr. Garston looked somehow like a druidical priest of old, as he raised his bared head to the sun's rays. And Pippa—Pippa, who loved the sun like a lover—had put up her rose-red parasol, and paced slowly over the sweet grass.
While June, with unwonted youthfulness, pranced ahead, Mrs. Carpenter turned to Mr. Garston.
“I knew you twelve years ago, Anthony Garston,” she said. “I never thought you would let your child grow up not believing in fairies!"
“I have always tried to educate June along rational lines,” said Mr. Garston, seriously but haltingly. “I have tried to equip her for such contingencies as her life might”
Pippa lost her temper.
“Equip her!” she cried sharply. “You are equipping her for pain and disillusionment. Don't you know, you silly, silly philosopher, that women—even child-women—cannot live without a blind belief in the impossible? Don't you know, man, that we must believe in fairies? How else do you suppose we face life? Women go into the most hideous conditions every day, and you think it's heroism! It isn't! It's because they carry around them a sort of glamour, and the echo of magic voices in their hearts. Oh, Anthony Garston, women must believe in fairies!”
“But,” protested the man, albeit weakly, “she—June—should not be encouraged—should she?—in believing things that are not true.”
Pippa faced him in frank scorn.
“And what, Anthony Garston,” she demanded, “are the things that are not true? Who are you, to assert that the hideous everydays are real, and that the beautiful dreams are false?”
The month of June, loveliest and richest of the year, crept by in a golden leisure.
Anthony Garston closed his books and his dusty study, and went with Pippa and little June into the out-of-door world, gathering wild flowers, and berries, and midsummer dreams.
The small girl grew more of a child each day, and each day, too, more insatiable in her desire for fairy tales and fairy talk. And her father used to join the two silently and listen to stories of dragons, and enchanted castles, and the dwarfs of the Black Forest. Pippa was very happy in this quiet dream-wrapped comradeship of three—yet there was always a rift and flaw.
Much as June loved to hear about the fairies, she never really believed in them. Much as Anthony Garston depended on the new and softening influence that Pippa had brought into his life, he never felt for her a sincere sentiment. She was to him something exotic and beautiful, but irrevocably associated with one brief memory of her that he carried from the past.
On her part, Pippa felt strangely drawn to the grave man, and pitied the dual nature, stern and tender, that looked out of his dark eyes. The great, quiet house where he lived and worked appealed to her as a haven of refuge. The woods and fields where she rambled with June were like pure water to one who has long journeyed over parched desert places. Sometimes she wondered
It was toward the end of the rose month that she went to Anthony Garston with a plan—a delicious, quaint, and secret plan to make little June at last believe in fairies.
At first the father demurred, but it was only a half-hearted protest, and with all the joy of a child who is “pretending” something altogether enchanting, Mrs. Carpenter set about her preparations.
“June,” she said one afternoon, “did you know it was midsummer eve, when all the fairies are abroad?”
June's large and serious eyes regarded her.
“Do you mean in Europe?” she wished to know soberly.
Pippa, smothering a smile, explained. And eventually June decided that it would be worth while to “'vestigate” the popular fancies of midsummer eve, by going out herself at moonrise, and seeing what would happen.
“The birch grove is a very likely place for fairies,” advised Philippa. “You won't be frightened, dear? You know people can only see the fairies when they are alone.”
“I am never frightened,” said June calmly, and went off to her tea.
The summer dusk had melted into violet and silver, and the moon peered suddenly over the dark outline of Lesbane Heights. June Garston, with slightly faltering footsteps—for she was only a small person of eight, in spite of her “rational” upbringing—entered the birch grove.
And then the fairy things began to happen.
First of all, it was not a bit dark in the grove. Not only did the moon pour down a flood of white radiance through the softly moving branches, making lacy shadows on the wet grass, but another light seemed glimmering somewhere about. Was it up in a tree, or where? June remembered vaguely that Mrs. Carpenter had told her of “Will-o'-the-wisp” and other goblin creatures, who bore wee lanterns by night. This light was faintly blue, and seemed to move here and there. among the slender trunks of the birch trees.
June's heart went pit-a-pat, but she was of stubborn New England stock, and so penetrated farther into the grove, in spite of the flickering blue light, and the loneliness filled with the sound of crickets and tree toads. Then she stopped with a sort of jump. For from the bushes came a low, strange, lovely voice, singing. The south wind rose softly, breathing a faint accompaniment. June trembled with rapture, and clasped her small hands tight together.
Years afterward, even when, looking back, she realized who had sung that strange little song, June thrilled with the memory of it. It was the song of all the fairy dreams, the delicate, fanciful ideals in the world. She could not know that the one who sang was putting into it every fragile, exquisite fancy of her own life, living again in a childhood long remote, interpreting that very tenderness of childhood to itself.
The voice died away, and June jumped again, as if waking from a dream. It was then that the glimmer of the light seemed to dance to her very feet, and—behold! She was standing in the center of a curious sort of ring. June was puzzled, for she had never seen anything like it. For several yards around the grass was pressed down—or cut, she could not see which—in a perfect circle half a foot broad. It really looked as if myriads of little feet had flattened it so.
The next moment a wet, sweet cluster of wild roses was flung in her very face, and a faint sound of laughter died among the moonlit trees. And then—for just a moment—a shadowy shape as white as the moon flitted across an open space and vanished in the shadows. June gave a little cry and started forward, but the fairy was gone. She fancied that she could hear the echo of the strange little song fading away farther—farther
June believed in fairies at last
It was the last day of the month of June. Pippa and Anthony Garston were walking on the terrace outside the big house, looking at the sunset, as its glory streamed in to them across the fields. June was playing in the garden, gathering the last of the opulent June roses. Pippa was in a tender, dreaming mood, full-filled with the magic of the hour.
As the last golden glimmer of sun slid down behind the sloping meadow, she said gently:
“It's gone—June.”
The man beside her took her hands in his, and lifted them to his heart.
“But—I love you,” he said simply. “Must we send the summer away?”
A long and a lonely highroad of life stretched before Pippa Carpenter, and she shivered as one does on the brink of a great temptation. Then she glanced up frankly, and smiled.
“Do you really want me to take care of—June?”
Though she had half expected it, it shocked her a bit to see the man stiffen involuntarily. She drew her hands from his very gently, as she waited to hear what he would say.
“I—I had thought she would be better off at a boarding school,” the man stammered finally. And Philippa rejoiced that she could laugh—clearly, softly, and without rancor or resentment.
“I'm sure she would!” she acquiesced heartily, and she opened her rose-red parasol, to shield her eyes from the fire in the west. In the strange, close reflection of the ruddy silk she seemed suddenly more desirable and more remote. Mr. Garston made a movement toward her that even Pippa recognized as involuntary.
The two faced each other in the red-gold glory of the sunset spell.
The man said never a word. It was only Pippa who spoke. And as she spoke, she seemed to see again the small, wistful-faced figure of little June in the dew-wet meadow at dawn, nearly a month ago.
“I—quite see. Truly I do—it's not just—affectation. If I had a little daughter, I'd want her to be—protected. Though”—the voice quivered and was stilled—“I don't think I should ever have done her any harm. But you're quite right. She must be—immaculate. But anyway” It was quite simply and without emotion of any kind that the conversation was ended.
“Anyway—I taught her to believe in fairies!”