CHAPTER XVVALLEY LAMPS

Madelaine Theddon was seventeen that autumn. She was one of those rare girls who seem to slip subtly into maturity while contemporaries of equal age are giggling over pimply-faced lovers, locking themselves away in bedrooms to indite sillybillet-doux, sighing over novels or clandestinely “putting up their hair.”

On an afternoon in mid-September she had climbed Mt. Tom with a party of schoolmates older than herself in nothing but years. They had accidentally (?) encountered college boys from Amherst. They lunched, flirted, drank and danced in the great, airy Summit House.

Madelaine was an accomplished dancer because of her litheness and exquisite grace of carriage. Yet to-day she had not cared for dancing. “Old Mother Hubbard” the boys often nicknamed her,—and left her alone. It was increasingly difficult for Madelaine to endure the crudities and vaporings of slangy, big-footed adolescence. They had left her much alone to-day.

She stole down the deck-like Summit House verandas, one by one, down the weather-mellowed and unpainted steps, and wandered off to the lower point of ledge at the south of that summit plateau. The Connecticut valley was far-flung at her feet, already hazy with dew-fog and twinkling with the first lamps of evening.

Hushed, peaceful, lofty, that place was,—serene, like the hour. The western afterglow was dying into lead. The sky—always finer and vaster from a mountain height—seemed a mammoth arch of sapphire porcelain where a low-hung evening star in the clear southwest shared ephemeral honors with a chaste new moon.

Madelaine stood for a time with her figure in silhouetteagainst the south, far out on the point of rock, raised in spirit above the world. The night wind, warm and river-moistened, blew up from vistaed lowlands, rippled her accordion skirt and raised pretty havoc with her hair. Her hands were thrust in the pockets of her sweater-coat, a sinuous protection of old-rose silk. She drank deeply of the night wind. She was thankful for the solitude.

The world was very beautiful in these first clear hours of early evening. She sank down after a time on the rock, gathering skirts about fragile ankles. She rested an elbow on a knee, a cheek in a shapely hand. And fancy wandered.

Faint, disturbing yearnings had throbbed in the girl’s body of late—her hunger for an Unknown Something was gradually changing—assuming a different aspect. There were times when she wanted to love—overwhelmingly—every one and everything in the world. Then she hated the world for its crudities and shrank from the monstrosities which shocked her on every hand.

Why did people remark—and keep on remarking—that she was “different”? Wherein was she different?

In so far as her school life developed, she played tennis, gave chafing-dish parties, went canoeing and handled the canoe herself, was officer and active worker in most of the school societies. She was versatile without being prodigal. Yet through all her activities ran that same thread of dark-eyed observation,—poise, self-conservation without repression, the intuitive ability to be ever the spectator while also the participant.

The other girls frankly “did not know what to make of her.” Yet when they were in difficulty or desired help on matters they were restrained from carrying to their elders, they sought out Madelaine Theddon as straight as a homing bee.

Up and down the slope at her left, the mountain cable-cars kept steep and endless shuttling. At her feet the serried lights of Holyoke Highlands brightened. Far to the south the concentration of radiance she knew to be Springfield glowed clearer on the horizon. Yet none of these, nor the stars, nor the fresh new moon, held the attraction of those dots of brave, optimistic twinkle where isolated homes were scattered upon the face of a night-shrouded valleyfloor. Was that it—the thing that troubled her—the lights of other people’s homes?

She did not wonder that heaven was peaceful, that God could be calm and omnipotent, high above the world. The spot and the panorama was an allegory. Yes, the earth was beautiful—very beautiful. She had always known it so. She knew it now a hundredfold. The pain came from wondering about her part in it, and of it, even as in her school life she remained the spectator though virilely the participant.

Waltz music from the Summit House drifted down to her. The world was hers, all its lights and laughter, all its fine rare things, all its rewards and fairies. No, the world was nothing of the sort! She was a mendicant, a Nobody. Always a Nobody. How could she ever forget that? So her moods played upon her. This at seventeen.

For Madelaine Theddon at seventeen, on a mountain height in the starlight, was as surely the Madelaine Theddon whom One Man found gloriously, as the sand-crusted diamond in the Kaffir’s girdle is the same burst of iridescent whiteness on Milady’s finger at Delmonico’s.

Madelaine, on the rock, wondered about the future, what she should do in the world, what niche she should fill. At times she felt a wild, instinctive impulse to attempt great tasks,—build, win, create, worship vast gods. Then her own weakness, namelessness, impotency, would overwhelm her. She must be attached to something substantial to do great work. Some one must have emphatic need of her. In these last moods she felt that building, winning, creating, worshiping vast gods, was all hollow nonsense,—tinsel and mummery. She only wanted to complement. But what she wanted to complement she could not decide, even if she could reach that far in her self-analysis. She was flowering indeed, but she was still seventeen.

The evening deepened. The afterglow—even the leaden afterglow—died on the hills. The stars and moon rode close. Lethe-like, exotic scents wandered through the upper air, no longer earthbound, soaring onward and upward to sweeten the reaches of infinity.

She was not in love, not at seventeen, despite encroaching maturity. Boys she knew, even the best of them, were calloused, independent, painfully sophisticated young hoydens whose principal invocation to the opposite sex was“Say!” And yet that restive, insatiable hunger to complement—the finest, grandest heritage of true womanhood—was gnawing. Gnawing pitifully.

Yet if she were not in love, love was in her,—blind, wingless, already beginning to look up through the latticed windows of cloistered maidenhood, observe the stars, long for freedom without knowing exactly what she would do with freedom if it were suddenly accorded her. Dreams came to her in detached hours, vague, breeze-wafted, miracle-laden. But when she tried to lay hold upon those dreams, make them over into conformity with reality, the world veered askew. She seemed to abrase her delicate soul in the enforced juxtaposition.

The “crowd”, regardless of proper chaperonage, had to be back in Mount Hadley at nine o’clock. But the girl stayed there on the ledge until the final moment of departure. Alarmed companions, missing her, searched the mountain top, calling her name.

The “chaperone” was a hulking maiden whose eligibility consisted in the fact that “come December she was going to be married.” The woman arraigned Madelaine severely.

“... If you ever give me another scare like this, I’ll have you read out of school! The very idea of running off by yourself and moping close to the edge of a dangerous precipice in the dark! I never had such a fright in my life!”

“I’m sorry,” returned Madelaine. “The valley was very beautiful. I stole off to watch the twinkling lamps.”

“Oh—you stole off to watch the twinkling lamps? Rather watch a few twinkling lamps than have some real fun while you’ve got the chance. I wouldn’t be like you, Madge Theddon, for all the money there is in Massachusetts. Why! You simply don’t know how to enjoy yourself——”

“Maybe,” suggested a snippish little prig who had entered the school a couple of years before, “maybe she’s wondering who her folks are!”

The prig’s name was Gridley and she had shown a dislike for Madelaine from the first afternoon. Miss Bernice Gridley had small patience with the quiet smile that playedabout Madelaine’s lips when the former sought to impress upon whosoever it might concern the vast importance of the Gridley money and blood. “She’s an orphan,” went on the Gridley girl, loud enough for Madelaine to overhear. As Bernice intended she should. “An awful nice feller I got acquainted with at the prom last June told me so. He’s a cousin of hers or something. She was adopted out of an orphan asylum. She’s all stuck-up because her foster-mother happens to have money! I’d rather be poor than a nobody!”

Madelaine’s features burned scarlet. A newspaper was lying on the seat of the trolley beside her. She picked up the sheet and tried to read, hiding her flaming face behind it.

It was the editorial page of that evening’sSpringfield Union. In the “goofus” column the staff humorist had included several verses clipped from an exchange. When Madelaine’s sight had cleared, she read the words. Then she forgot the ill-bred Gridley girl. The subject and sentiment was mesmeric and the catty environment faded.

“GIRL-WITHOUT-A-NAME(FromThe Paris[Vt.]Telegraph)“You came to me in my dreams last night,Dear Girl-Without-a-Name;A lovely phantom from out the spaceThat parts our lives, you came.You greeted me with your eyes, dear heart,And secrets Peri keep;I moved with you, with your hand in mine.Down the mystic glades of sleep.“We idled long in those glades, dear heart,The world a purple mist;Beside an amethyst stream we strolledAnd kept that midnight tryst.The little stars drifted down the sky,A hush! ... I felt a hand,And once ... just once! ... came a whisper soft:‘Dear heart, I understand!’“I do not know all we said, dear heart,The night ran swift away,But all the charm of your presence sweetCame back from Dream to Day.It’s not the words that you spoke, dear heart,That made that tryst so fine,But that kind night found a subtle wayTo bring your hand to mine.“The tears and toil we may know, dear heart,Must some day reach an end;Through miles and years we must search sometimes,Ten thousand for one friend.Yet some great noon in the sun-glare bright,In some vast open space,You’ll stand, flesh-clothed, with your arms outstretchedAnd triumph on your face.“I know few words will be needed then,Lament nor name nor plea,We’ll let our eyes speak the message sweet:‘Grow old along with me!’A thousand years shall become as oneAs heart to heart shall press,And God shall start all his worlds anewFrom that first white caress.“You may be dark or you may be fair,You may not have a name,Though you’ve been sold for a caliph’s goldThat kiss will mean the same.The soul of man has a thousand lives,Yet Love has only one,That leaps alive to the Glory Cry:‘Dear heart, the trek is done!’“And so the nights with a velvet treadMount softly into years;The gray days come and the bright days go,With smiles and fears and tears.But somewhere off o’er a clean sea’s track,Each soul’s High Noon is due;Be strong, dear heart, though the wait is hard;Till then ... just dreams ... and You!—“Nathaniel Forge.”

“GIRL-WITHOUT-A-NAME

(FromThe Paris[Vt.]Telegraph)

“You came to me in my dreams last night,Dear Girl-Without-a-Name;A lovely phantom from out the spaceThat parts our lives, you came.You greeted me with your eyes, dear heart,And secrets Peri keep;I moved with you, with your hand in mine.Down the mystic glades of sleep.

“You came to me in my dreams last night,

Dear Girl-Without-a-Name;

A lovely phantom from out the space

That parts our lives, you came.

You greeted me with your eyes, dear heart,

And secrets Peri keep;

I moved with you, with your hand in mine.

Down the mystic glades of sleep.

“We idled long in those glades, dear heart,The world a purple mist;Beside an amethyst stream we strolledAnd kept that midnight tryst.The little stars drifted down the sky,A hush! ... I felt a hand,And once ... just once! ... came a whisper soft:‘Dear heart, I understand!’

“We idled long in those glades, dear heart,

The world a purple mist;

Beside an amethyst stream we strolled

And kept that midnight tryst.

The little stars drifted down the sky,

A hush! ... I felt a hand,

And once ... just once! ... came a whisper soft:

‘Dear heart, I understand!’

“I do not know all we said, dear heart,The night ran swift away,But all the charm of your presence sweetCame back from Dream to Day.It’s not the words that you spoke, dear heart,That made that tryst so fine,But that kind night found a subtle wayTo bring your hand to mine.

“I do not know all we said, dear heart,

The night ran swift away,

But all the charm of your presence sweet

Came back from Dream to Day.

It’s not the words that you spoke, dear heart,

That made that tryst so fine,

But that kind night found a subtle way

To bring your hand to mine.

“The tears and toil we may know, dear heart,Must some day reach an end;Through miles and years we must search sometimes,Ten thousand for one friend.Yet some great noon in the sun-glare bright,In some vast open space,You’ll stand, flesh-clothed, with your arms outstretchedAnd triumph on your face.

“The tears and toil we may know, dear heart,

Must some day reach an end;

Through miles and years we must search sometimes,

Ten thousand for one friend.

Yet some great noon in the sun-glare bright,

In some vast open space,

You’ll stand, flesh-clothed, with your arms outstretched

And triumph on your face.

“I know few words will be needed then,Lament nor name nor plea,We’ll let our eyes speak the message sweet:‘Grow old along with me!’A thousand years shall become as oneAs heart to heart shall press,And God shall start all his worlds anewFrom that first white caress.

“I know few words will be needed then,

Lament nor name nor plea,

We’ll let our eyes speak the message sweet:

‘Grow old along with me!’

A thousand years shall become as one

As heart to heart shall press,

And God shall start all his worlds anew

From that first white caress.

“You may be dark or you may be fair,You may not have a name,Though you’ve been sold for a caliph’s goldThat kiss will mean the same.The soul of man has a thousand lives,Yet Love has only one,That leaps alive to the Glory Cry:‘Dear heart, the trek is done!’

“You may be dark or you may be fair,

You may not have a name,

Though you’ve been sold for a caliph’s gold

That kiss will mean the same.

The soul of man has a thousand lives,

Yet Love has only one,

That leaps alive to the Glory Cry:

‘Dear heart, the trek is done!’

“And so the nights with a velvet treadMount softly into years;The gray days come and the bright days go,With smiles and fears and tears.But somewhere off o’er a clean sea’s track,Each soul’s High Noon is due;Be strong, dear heart, though the wait is hard;Till then ... just dreams ... and You!

“And so the nights with a velvet tread

Mount softly into years;

The gray days come and the bright days go,

With smiles and fears and tears.

But somewhere off o’er a clean sea’s track,

Each soul’s High Noon is due;

Be strong, dear heart, though the wait is hard;

Till then ... just dreams ... and You!

—“Nathaniel Forge.”

Madelaine read the fine-typed verses again and again. An inexplicable, constricted feeling tightened across her chest. Somehow the lines frightened her, as though a Voice had come from the void and whispered a promise close at her ear.

She finally creased the edges of the column neat and true. She tore away the ragged portions and folded the poem in her purse.

Who was Nathaniel Forge? Why should he write such a poem? She wondered. She saved the poem.

Back to Index Next