Messages of Spring

BY ALAN SULLIVAN

HE Rev. James Morton seated himself at the breakfast-table, said grace, sighed inaudibly, and addressed himself to his porridge. He had done this for so many mornings that now it was an automatic sequence to which he seemed to contribute nothing but modulated sounds and certain dignified motions. Presently, as always, Maria Morton repeated the parochial duties for the day, repeated them in that deliberate monotone which the Reverend James had long recognized as the voice of destiny. There was the Girls' Friendly Society, the Dorcas Society, the committee on food values for the poor; and the deputation to the city council in the matter of playgrounds.

He listened, or rather his ears received it, while his brain plodded along, keeping always exactly one sentence ahead. To the silence that followed he contributed nothing; but a breath of spring air that drifted through the open window set his mind wandering till it reached back to another spring day, now long past, when Maria had sat at his breakfast-table for the very first time. Slowly she became transfigured. He saw again the pink-and-white of her cheeks, the adorable curls on her neck, the entrancing curve of shoulder and arm, the unspeakable light in her dancing blue eyes. Ah, that—

"Your coffee, James!"

He returned with a thud. The vision vanished, to be replaced by a small, brisk woman with quick, agile eyes, slightly compressed lips, cheeks that retained a pink oasis in their somewhat sallow curves, and brown hair tightly drawn back into a small convolvulated hump.

He smiled mechanically. "Thank you, my dear," then paused with the cup in his hand. "You forgot Mrs. Berryman."

Maria glanced over the coffee-pot. "Oh, are you going there?"

"She telephoned last night that she would like me to call."

His wife hesitated. It was almost imperceptible—that is, it would have been in any other woman. But to James Morton hesitation in Maria was notable.

"What's the matter with her?"

"I don't know, my dear. She didn't say."

Maria sniffed. For the rest of the meal she said little, but shot curious glances at her husband. Words seemed to tremble on her lips, only to be gulped hurriedly down.

The Reverend James rose and went into his study. Two hours later he descended to the hall, grasped his hat and stick, and stepped thoughtfully out into the sunshine. Maria watched him from her bedroom window. Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth twitched. It seemed almost as if some other Maria were demanding utterance. Her eyes followed to the corner, then, as his slim black shoulders vanished, she threw herself on the bed and put her face between her hands.

Mabel Berryman heard the door-bell and leaned languidly back in an invalid-chair. She really looked extremely well. Her natural pallor heightened the effect of her large, dark eyes, and just now her eyes were larger and darker than ever. She had, a week or so before, decided—and the decision had a touch of deliciousness in it—to set her house in order. This visitation was the immediate outcome of those elusive springtime sensations in which one is translated, as it were, to more intimate communion with a more beautiful universe. To these she had yielded with something akin to abandonment. They all pointed to the probability of her not being long in this world. She had gone even further, and called up pleasing and pathetic visions of the scenes that would follow her most sad demise. Transported thus to a plane which she was convinced was the loftiest plane of all, she put on her prettiest tea-gown, had the room dusted and filled with flowers, and then sent, as one most naturally would send, for the Rev. James Morton.

Her smile of greeting was meant to be one of resignation. It touched her to think that the very small white and smooth hand which she extended to him was that of a woman poised almost between earth and heaven, that this visit of his was but the precursor of other visits, each successively more intimate, more soulful. She felt very fragile, like a Dresden cup perilously near the edge of the shelf.

She had rehearsed her side of this interview and dwelt with transitory unction on the gradual unfolding of her precarious condition, her joy in the life that now paused in its comfortable voyage, her recognition of the ephemeral side of things in general, and her ultimate desire to get in touch with matters transcendental. It had all seemed very good, and she had felt that it was even touching. But now, surveying James Morton's matter-of-fact face and somewhat non-ethereal manner, she experienced a fluttering of doubt.

"It's very good of you to come and see me."

"Not at all. I'm very glad to come. Not ill, I hope?"

Mrs. Berryman sighed. "It's not serious, so far as the doctors can tell, but—one never really knows." Her large eyes engulfed him. "I've been so much alone of late that I wanted to talk to you."

"Yes. Can I be of any service?"

She nodded. "You see, one can never tell how long one is going to live."

The Reverend James looked startled. This springlike room yielded no suggestion of departure, and Mrs. Berryman, though undoubtedly pale, lacked every premonitory symptom of dissolution.

"At such a time as this," she went on, gently, "one does think, doesn't one? There is so much one leaves behind, isn't there?"

"Yes," he said, wrinkling his brows, "but—"

"That's just what I'm coming to. I want everything as it ought to be. Life has been very kind, and, frankly, Mr. Morton, I want to be remembered as one who—who did her duty by society and," she added, hastily, "by humanity"

"This is very noble of you; but, Mrs. Berryman, surely you are not going to—"

"Ah, that's it—that's the mysterious, wonderful part of it. Yesterday—you remember what a wonderful day yesterday was—it came to me very distinctly from out there." Her tea-gown fell away from the soft curves of a lifted arm. "I couldn't say it was a voice—it was more of a message that was full of sad but very beautiful whispers. It seemed, Mr. Morton—it seemed that the spirits of the flowers themselves were speaking."

The Reverend James hesitated. "Yes—and then? …"

"It was all very intimate and very touching. One could not rebel, however"—here she glanced effectively round the room—"however much life had to offer."

She lay back in her chair and waited expectantly. A breath of wind stirred her soft brown hair. Her lips were parted. The Reverend James noted that they were not the lips of a candidate for the Unknown. But he also noted the femininity, the grace and contour of her exquisite person. She seemed an essential part of the perfect room she occupied. The room, indeed, was a background in harmony with her exquisiteness.

"To be quite frank with you," he said, bluntly, "I think you have—er—misinterpreted your—er—message."

She sat up, suddenly and vigorously. "What!"

"Misinterpreted your message," he persisted, confidently. "And, if I may say so, these—er—whispers of spring are—er—not at all uncommon." His face relaxed and he leaned forward, smiling. "I have had some myself lately."

A pink flood slowly mounted into Mrs. Berryman's pale cheeks. "I—I don't understand."

"That's quite reasonable. It does seem strange that a person as—as formal as myself should receive messages of spring, but I assure you it's perfectly true. Only in my case they suggested the past—not the future."

"You think, then, in my case, that …"

"You're a much more receptive person to such things than I am. And in your case," he smiled again, "naturally they would not suggest that which has had so little time to exist."

He sat back, with a tingle of surprise at himself. Spring was, without doubt, in the air. Mrs. Berryman's eyes took on a totally different light. She pursed her lips, glanced at him swiftly, then rippled into a bubble of a laugh.

"That's really very pretty. I feel better already—and you refuse to take me seriously?"

He nodded. "Part of you."

"And the other part?"

"You said you wanted to do something for humanity, in case— Suppose you left out the 'in case'?"

"You mean, do it anyway?"

"Why not?" She tilted her head and regarded him thoughtfully. "What do you suggest?"

"That's rather difficult, offhand. May I think it over and tell you in a week or so?"

"It would be very kind of you. And in the mean time?" "Yes?"

"As to myself—you think that I may have misinterpreted the—the message?" she questioned, daintily insistent.

He smiled, with a glint of sudden humor in his eyes. "Did I say that?"

"Didn't you mean it?"

"Yes, but that's only half of it."

"And the second half?"

"Qualifies the first. It's the jam with the pill." "Jam, please," she laughed.

"The messages of spring," he said, happily, "make us think about ourselves; then, if they are real messages, such as you caught, they make us think of other people—as you have."

She pouted. "Hm!—that's very noble—but not half so interesting. Tell me," she added, daringly, "don't you sometimes get tired?"

"Of what?"

"Thinking of other people. Wouldn't you like to forget them all, utterly, just for a while? They are, of course, very worthy, and the backbone of the country, and all that sort of thing, but—really—don't you think other people are different from oneself? And somehow—oh—you know what I mean—they don't feel what oneself feels, so, of course, they couldn't comprehend. You understand, don't you?" Her large eyes gazed into his face. Were they provocative, or had they only a petitionary china blue?

The Reverend James began to perceive that he had enjoyed himself exceedingly. He chuckled as he rose to go. "What would you like me to say?"

It struck him afterward that he could not have made a less parochial remark. How would it have sounded at the Mothers' Union?

Mrs. Berryman was radiant. "Do you know," she said, tilting her golden head, "you're not a bit like a real clergyman. I've enjoyed your visit so much."

A sudden chill struck his spine. "Good morning," he said, hastily. "I'll drop in some day next week."

Slipping from the invalid-chair in a cloud of filmy negligée, she watched him going down the garden path. He had at first seemed rather stiff, rather angular, with the black severity of his cloth in sharp contrast to the soft, luxurious tones of her morning-room. To her, he did not look like a man who could hear the messages of spring, or for whom, indeed, there were any sensations so ineffable and delicate as those by which she had been transported. But, she admitted, there was a certain solid dignity about him. If many of the relaxations of the laity had been ironed out of his life, he seemed, nevertheless, immune to much of the pettiness of laymen's surroundings. He was, in a way, ennobled by what he had not. She wondered about the rest of the Reverend James—the part of him that had only peeped out of its cloistered screen, then ducked and disappeared. Suddenly she thought of Maria Morton, and laughed.

The Reverend James walked slowly down-town toward the parish-house. His mind was in a subdued tumult which was not without certain gratifying sensations. Had he been suddenly accosted by one of his wardens he would, without doubt, have vaulted back into the familiar bounds of his parochial territory. But—and he noted it thankfully—the streets were singularly empty. He was still conscious of the benison of the spring, and yielded luxuriously to every bland, atmospheric caress. He was conscious, as well, that some interesting but long-forgotten side of his nature had been awakened. This was, without question, due to the potent effect of the spring plus Mrs. Berryman. He questioned himself with gradually relaxing persistence as to why the spring plus Mrs. Berryman should have aroused within him these pleasurable emotions which had failed, for many years, to answer to the touch of spring plus Maria. One spring, he conceded, was admittedly very like another. He shrank loyally from the conclusion that the variant element must be found elsewhere, and began all over again. Maria was, without question, devoted to him. No man could ask more from a woman than Maria had laid at his sacerdotal feet. Furthermore, Maria was his parochial calendar. She had individual brain-cells, it appeared, for each successive parish function. No permutations of his own escaped the inflexibility of her sacrificial memory. She put him daily where he should be, and it seemed to the Reverend James that all he had to do was to stay where he was put. As to her own part of this ordained duality, she seemed to have no desires save that all should go well with James and his work. He wondered whether devotion carried to such a point might not stifle its object and defeat its own end. And then his mind wandered further back, and he visioned their honeymoon and the still enfranchised Maria with laughing eyes and ruffled hair as she drew his head down on her round young shoulder and said, "Don't hurry back to the old parish; it will have you long enough!" He breathed a little faster at the thought of Maria with her hair emancipated from its convolvulated hump; Maria, with her beautiful young arms around his neck; Maria in a tea-gown; Maria kissing him as she used to kiss him, and saying, "James, it's time we had a good holiday again!"

Conceive, if you will, these masculine perturbations in a clerical breast; button them down tightly beneath the severity of a black coat, then impinge on the clerical ear the chimes of its own church, and there will be produced precisely that pectoral disturbance which unsettled the Reverend James as he piloted the Dorcas Society through its weekly gathering. Banish from your mind any thought that a course in divinity renders one immune to sentimental riot, or that rectorial blood fails in the quota of red corpuscles that may be determined in the veins of a parishioner, and you will enter into the secret chambers of the heart of the Rev. James Morton as he prepared for the committee meeting on food values for the poor.

He turned homeward at evening, physically exhausted, with tightly bottled emotions that must on no account disturb the serenity of the rectory. He was prepared to greet Maria with just as much demonstration of affection as her impeccable sense of responsibility would permit. He was ready even to take a chance on more.

He entered the house and went to his study with some books. Maria was not visible. He heard her moving about in the bedroom, and went quietly up. Half-way there, he heard a trunk dragged from a closet into the middle of the room. Stepping very quietly, he opened the door. Maria was leaning over the trunk, with her back to him. He stood, but did not speak, wondering what she was doing. She was not going away—Maria never went away.

Presently she took out something he recognized—her last-summer's hat. This she laid on the bed, then drew forth a faded frock that had done service through the glare of the preceding year.

She looked at these curiously. Her lips were compressed and a bright spot burned on either cheek. Taking the frock, she held its waist against her belt, and turned the dull folds of the fabric to the window. For an instant thus. Then with swift and sudden motion she ripped the thin skirt from end to end, rolled it in a lump, and pitched it contemptuously into a corner.

The Reverend James had only time to gasp before she took up the hat. Putting this on, she wheeled and stared into the mirror. By this time her eyes were very bright and her cheeks were on fire. What the mirror reflected he could not see, but apparently it was enough for Maria. With one desperate jerk the hat was whipped off. One coil of her thick brown hair loosened from its prison and fell below her waist. She held out the hat, peered derisively at its crumpled shape, flung it to the floor, and ground her heel into the flattened straw. Then the Reverend James heard her catch her breath, till, after a poignant, speechless moment, she threw herself face downward on the bed. An instant later her shoulders began to heave. The Reverend James choked, thought hard and with terrific velocity, then instinctively stepped forward. His own heart was jumping with a long-dormant but now pounding hammer. His eyes were misty, but through the mist gleamed a primordial joy. He put his arm around her. "Maria, dearest, what is it?"

Her sobbing abated, but she could not speak.

"Maria," he said, gently. "Tell me!"

She gulped and looked slowly up. "You wouldn't understand."

"Wouldn't I?" he answered, tremulously. "I think I would. In fact, I think I do—already."

Maria dabbed her eyes and blinked at him doubtfully. "Oh, James, you'll think I'm crazy. But something took hold of me when I got those things out. I didn't know I was so sick of them. I suppose its the springtime coming round. I'm tired, James. I've been tired for years, but I didn't want to say anything about it—on account of you and your work." She began to sob again, quietly and wearily.

The Reverend James bent lower. "Maria," he said, tenderly, "look at me."

Again she lifted her tear-stained face. "It's no use. I know I'm crazy, and you can't possibly understand. But, I want," she wailed—"I want to forget everything, and do nothing for a while but just play the fool."

The heart of the Reverend James leaped with savage berserker joy. He caught her to him and held her closely.

"Maria," he breathed, fiercely, "can't you see? So do I!"