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A GOVERNOR it
was proclaimed this time,
When all who would come
seeking in New Hampshire
Ancestral memories might
come together.
And those of the name Stark gathered
in Bow,
A rock-strewn town where farming has fallen
off,
And sprout-lands flourish where the axe has
gone.
Someone had literally run to earth
In an old
cellar hole in a by-road
The origin of all the family
there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift
to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a
tent in grove and orchard.
They were at Bow, but that
was not enough:
Nothing would do but they must fix a
day
To stand together on the crater's verge
That
turned them on the world, and try to fathom
The past
and get some strangeness out of it.
But rain spoiled
all. The day began uncertain,
With clouds low
trailing and moments of rain that misted.
The young
folk held some hope out to each other
Till well
toward noon when the storm settled down
With a swish
in the grass. "What if the others
Are there," they
said. "It isn't going to rain."
Only one from a farm
not far away
Strolled thither, not expecting he would
find
Anyone else, but out of idleness.
One, and
one other, yes, for there were two.
The second round
the curving hillside road
Was a girl; and she halted
some way off
To reconnoitre, and then made up her
mind
At least to pass by and see who he was,
And
perhaps hear some word about the weather.
This was
some Stark she didn't know. He nodded.
"No fête
to-day," he said.
"It looks that way."
She swept
the heavens, turning on her heel.
"I only idled
down."
"I idled down."
Provision there had been
for just such meeting
Of stranger cousins, in a
family tree
Drawn on a sort of passport with the
branch
Of the one bearing it done in detail--
Some
zealous one's laborious device.
She made a sudden
movement toward her bodice,
As one who clasps her
heart. They laughed together.
"Stark?" he inquired.
"No matter for the proof."
"Yes, Stark. And you?"
"I'm Stark." He drew his passport.
"You know we might
not be and still be cousins:
The town is full of
Chases, Lowes, and Baileys,
All claiming some
priority in Starkness.
My mother was a Lane, yet
might have married
Anyone upon earth and still her
children
Would have been Starks, and doubtless here
to-day."
"You riddle with your genealogy
Like a
Viola. I don't follow you."
"I only mean my mother
was a Stark
Several times over, and by marrying
father
No more than brought us back into the name."
"One ought not to be thrown into confusion
By a plain
statement of relationship,
But I own what you say
makes my head spin.
You take my card--you seem so
good at such things--
And see if you can reckon our
cousinship.
Why not take seats here on the cellar
wall
And dangle feet among the raspberry vines?"
"Under the shelter of the family tree."
"Just
so--that ought to be enough protection."
"Not from
the rain. I think it's going to rain."
"It's
raining."
"No, it's misting; let's be fair.
Does
the rain seem to you to cool the eyes?"
The situation
was like this: the road
Bowed outward on the mountain
half-way up,
And disappeared and ended not far off.
No one went home that way. The only house
Beyond
where they were was a shattered seedpod.
And below
roared a brook hidden in trees,
The sound of which
was silence for the place.
This he sat listening to
till she gave judgment.
"On father's side, it seems,
we're--let me see----"
"Don't be too technical.--You
have three cards."
"Four cards, one yours, three
mine, one for each branch
Of the Stark family I'm a
member of."
"D'you know a person so related to
herself
Is supposed to be mad."
"I may be mad."
"You look so, sitting out here in the rain
Studying
genealogy with me
You never saw before. What will we
come to
With all this pride of ancestry, we Yankees?
I think we're all mad. Tell me why we're here
Drawn
into town about this cellar hole
Like wild geese on a
lake before a storm?
What do we see in such a hole, I
wonder."
"The Indians had a myth of Chicamoztoc,
Which means The Seven Caves that We Came out of.
This
is the pit from which we Starks were digged."
"You
must be learned. That's what you see in it?"
"And
what do you see?"
"Yes, what do I see?
First let
me look. I see raspberry vines----"
"Oh, if you're
going to use your eyes, just hear
What I see. It's a
little, little boy,
As pale and dim as a match flame
in the sun;
He's groping in the cellar after jam,
He thinks it's dark and it's flooded with daylight."
"He's nothing. Listen. When I lean like this
I can
make out old Grandsir Stark distinctly,--
With his
pipe in his mouth and his brown jug--
Bless you, it
isn't Grandsir Stark, it's Granny,
But the pipe's
there and smoking and the jug.
She's after cider, the
old girl, she's thirsty;
Here's hoping she gets her
drink and gets out safely."
"Tell me about her. Does
she look like me?"
"She should, shouldn't she, you're
so many times
Over descended from her. I believe
She does look like you. Stay the way you are.
The
nose is just the same, and so's the chin--
Making
allowance, making due allowance."
"You poor, dear,
great, great, great, great Granny!"
"See that you get
her greatness right. Don't stint her."
"Yes, it's
important, though you think it isn't.
I won't be
teased. But see how wet I am."
"Yes, you must go; we
can't stay here for ever.
But wait until I give you a
hand up.
A bead of silver water more or less
Strung on your hair won't hurt your summer looks.
I
wanted to try something with the noise
That the brook
raises in the empty valley.
We have seen visions--now
consult the voices.
Something I must have learned
riding in trains
When I was young. I used the roar
To set the voices speaking out of it,
Speaking or
singing, and the band-music playing.
Perhaps you have
the art of what I mean.
I've never listened in among
the sounds
That a brook makes in such a wild descent.
It ought to give a purer oracle."
"It's as you throw
a picture on a screen:
The meaning of it all is out
of you;
The voices give you what you wish to hear."
"Strangely, it's anything they wish to give."
"Then I
don't know. It must be strange enough.
I wonder if
it's not your make-believe.
What do you think you're
like to hear to-day?"
"From the sense of our having
been together--
But why take time for what I'm like
to hear?
I'll tell you what the voices really say.
You will do very well right where you are
A little
longer. I mustn't feel too hurried,
Or I can't give
myself to hear the voices."
"Is this some trance you
are withdrawing into?"
"You must be very still; you
mustn't talk."
"I'll hardly breathe."
"The voices
seem to say----"
"I'm waiting."
"Don't! The voices
seem to say:
Call her Nausicaa, the unafraid
Of an
acquaintance made adventurously."
"I let you say
that--on consideration."
"I don't see very well how
you can help it.
You want the truth. I speak but by
the voices.
You see they know I haven't had your
name,
Though what a name should matter between
us----"
"I shall suspect----"
"Be good. The voices
say:
Call her Nausicaa, and take a timber
That you
shall find lies in the cellar charred
Among the
raspberries, and hew and shape it
For a door-sill or
other corner piece
In a new cottage on the ancient
spot.
The life is not yet all gone out of it.
And
come and make your summer dwelling here,
And perhaps
she will come, still unafraid,
And sit before you in
the open door
With flowers in her lap until they
fade,
But not come in across the sacred sill----"
"I wonder where your oracle is tending.
You can see
that there's something wrong with it,
Or it would
speak in dialect. Whose voice
Does it purport to
speak in? Not old Grandsir's
Nor Granny's, surely.
Call up one of them.
They have best right to be heard
in this place."
"You seem so partial to our
great-grandmother
(Nine times removed. Correct me if
I err.)
You will be likely to regard as sacred
Anything she may say. But let me warn you,
Folks in
her day were given to plain speaking.
You think you'd
best tempt her at such a time?"
"It rests with us
always to cut her off."
"Well then, it's Granny
speaking: 'I dunnow!
Mebbe I'm wrong to take it as I
do.
There ain't no names quite like the old ones
though,
Nor never will be to my way of thinking.
One mustn't bear too hard on the new comers,
But
there's a dite too many of them for comfort.
I should
feel easier if I could see
More of the salt wherewith
they're to be salted.
Son, you do as you're told! You
take the timber--
It's as sound as the day when it
was cut--
And begin over----' There, she'd better
stop.
You can see what is troubling Granny, though.
But don't you think we sometimes make too much
Of the
old stock? What counts is the ideals,
And those will
bear some keeping still about."
"I can see we are
going to be good friends."
"I like your 'going to
be.' You said just now
It's going to rain."
"I
know, and it was raining.
I let you say all that. But
I must go now."
"You let me say it? on consideration?
How shall we say good-bye in such a case?"
"How shall
we?"
"Will you leave the way to me?"
"No, I don't
trust your eyes. You've said enough.
Now give me your
hand up.--Pick me that flower."
"Where shall we meet
again?"
"Nowhere but here
Once more before we meet
elsewhere."
"In rain?"
"It ought to be in rain.
Sometime in rain.
In rain to-morrow, shall we, if it
rains?
But if we must, in sunshine." So she went.
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