“When the dew falls, they’ll sing.”
“Ha, ha! What fools we are.”
He flung the hoe across the wheelbarrow and started wheeling it toward the toolhouse.
“Bring the watering pot!”
Martha ran after him and put it in the wheelbarrow.
“That’s right—add to my burden—never do anything that you can make somebody else do.”
Martha giggled, in response, and skipped toward the house. When she reached the stone steps she put her feet close together and with dark seriousness hopped up step after step in that manner. He watched her and smiled.
“O Lord, Lord,” he said, “what a circus we are.”
He trundled the bumping wheelbarrow and whistled. The red sun, enormous in the slight haze, was gashing itself cruelly on a black pine tree. The hylas, by now, had burst into full shrill-sweet chorus in the swamp, and of the birds all but a few scraping grackles were still. “Peace—peace—peace,” sang the hylas, a thousand at once. Silver bells, frailer than thimbles, ringing under a still and infinite sea of ether.… “Peace—peace,” he murmured. Then he dropped the wheelbarrow in horror, and put his hands to his ears. “The enemy!” he cried. “Martha! hurry! Martha!” This time Martha seemed to be out of earshot, so he was obliged to circumvent the enemy with great caution. The enemy was a toad who sat, by preference, near the toolhouse door: obese, sage, and wrinkled like a Chinese god. “Toad that under cold stone.” Marvelous compulsion of rhythm!… He thrust the wheelbarrow into the cool pleasant-smelling darkness of the toolhouse, and walked toward the kitchen door, which just at that moment Hilda opened.
“Hurry up,” she said. Her voice had a delicious mildness in the still air and added curiously to his already overwhelming sense of luxury. He had, for a moment, an extraordinarily satisfying sense of space.
III.
He lifted his eyes from the pudding to the Hokusai print over the mantel.
“Think of it with shame! We sit here again grossly feeding our insatiable bellies, while Fujiyama, there, thrusts his copper-colored cone into a cobalt sky among whipped-cream clouds! Pilgrims, in the dusk, toil up his sides with staves. Pilgrims like ants. They struggle upwards in the darkness for pure love of beauty.”
“I don’t like bread pudding,” ejaculated Mary solemnly. “It’s beany.”
Martha and Marjorie joined in a silvery cascade of giggles.
“Where did she get that awful word!” said Hilda.
“Tom says it, mother.”
“Well, for goodness’ sake, forget it.”
Mary stared gravely about the table, spoon in mouth, and then, removing the spoon, repeated, “It’s beany.”
He groaned, folding his napkin.
“What an awful affliction a family is. Why did we marry, Hilda? Life is a trap.”
“Mrs. Ferguson called this afternoon and presented me with a basket of green strawberries. I’m afraid she thought I wasn’t very appreciative. I hate to be interrupted when I’m sewing. Why under the sun does she pick them before they’re ripe?”
“That’s a nice way to treat a neighbor who gives you a present!… You are an ungrateful creature.”
Hilda was languid.
“Well, I didn’t ask her for them.”
Her eyes gleamed with a slow provocative amusement.
“They’re beany,” said Mary.
He rolled his eyes at Mary:
“Our kids are too much with us. Bib and spoon,
Feeding and spanking, we lay waste our powers!”
They all pushed back their chairs, laughing, and a moment later, as he lighted his cigar, he heard from the music room Hilda’s violin begin with tremulous thin notes, oddly analogous to the sound of her voice when she sang, playing Bach to a methodical loud piano accompaniment by Martha. Melancholy came like a blue wave out of the dusk, lifted him, and broke slowly and deliciously over him. He stood for a moment, made motionless by the exquisite, intricate melody, stared, as if seeking with his eyes for the meaning of the silvery algebra of sound, and then went out.
The sun had set, darkness was at hand. He walked to the top of the stone steps and looked across the shallow valley toward the fading hill and the black water tower. The trees on the crest, sharply silhouetted against a last band of pale light, looked like marching men. Lights winked at the base of the hill. And now, as hill and water tower and trees became obscure, he began to see once more the dim phantasmal outlines of the dark city, the city submerged under the infinite sea, the city not inhabited by mortals. Immense, sinister, and black, old and cold as the moon, were the walls that surrounded it. No gate gave entrance to it. Of a paler stone were the houses upon houses, tiers upon tiers of shadowy towers, which surmounted the walls. Not a light was to be seen in it, not a motion; it was still. He stared and stared at it, following with strained eyes the faint lines which might indicate its unlighted streets, seeking in vain, as always, to discover in the walls of it any sign of any window. It grew darker, it faded, a profound and vast secret, an inscrutable mystery.
“She is older than the rocks,” he murmured.
He turned away and walked over the lawn in the darkness, listening to the hylas, who seemed now to be saturating the hushed night with sound. “Peace—peace—peace—” they sang. Pax vobiscum. He gathered the croquet mallets and leaned them against the elm tree, swearing when he tripped over an unseen wicket. This done, he walked down the pale road, blowing clouds of smoke above him with uplifted face, and luxuriated in the sight of the dark tops of trees motionless against the stars. A soft skipping sound in the leaves at the road’s edge made him jump. He laughed to himself.… “He had no watch, and his trousers grew like grass.…” He took out his watch and peered closely at it. The children were in bed, and Hilda was waiting for a game of chess. He walked back with his hands deep in his pockets. Pawn to King-four.
“Hilda! wake up!”
Hilda opened her candid eyes without astonishment and sat up over the chessboard, on which the tiny men were already arranged.
“Goodness! how you scared me. What took you so long? I’ve been dreaming about Bluebeard.”
“Bluebeard! Good heavens. I hope he didn’t look like me.”
“He did—remarkably!”
“A nice thing to say to your husband.… Move! Hurry up!… I’m going to capture your King. Queens die young and fair.”
He smoked his pipe. Hilda played morosely. Delicious she was when she was half asleep like this! She leaned her head on one hand, her elbow on the table.… When she had been checkmated, at the end of half an hour, she sank back wearily in her chair. She looked at him intently for a moment and began to smile.
“And how about the dark city tonight?” she asked. He took slow puffs at his pipe and stared meditatively at the ceiling.
“Ah—the dark city, Hilda! the city submerged under an infinite sea, the city not inhabited by mortals!… It was there again—would you believe it?… It was there.… I went out to the stone steps, smoking my cigar, while you played Bach. I hardly dared to look—I watched the hill out of the corner of my eyes, and pretended to be listening to the music.… And suddenly, at the right moment of dusk, just after the street-lamps had winked along the base of the hill, I saw it. The hill that we see there in the daylight with its water tower and marching trees, its green sloping fields and brook that flashes in the sun, is unreal, an illusion, the thinnest of disguises—a cloak of green velvet which the dark city throws over itself at the coming of the first ray of light.… I saw it distinctly. Immense, smooth, and black, old and cold as the moon, are the walls that surround it. No gate gives entrance to it. Of a paler stone are the houses, tiers upon tiers of shadowy towers that surmount those sepulchral walls. No motion was perceptible there—no light gleamed there—no sound, no whisper rose from it. I thought: perhaps it is a city of the dead. The walls of it have no windows, and its inhabitants must be blind.… And then I seemed to see it more closely, in a twilight which appeared to be its own, and this closer perception gave way, in turn, to a vision. For first I saw that all the walls of it are moist, dripping, slippery, as if it were bathed in a deathlike dew; and then I saw its people. Its people are maggots—maggots of perhaps the size of human children; their heads are small and wedge-shaped, and glow with a faint bluish light. Masses of them swarm within those walls. Masses of them pour through the streets, glisten on the buttresses and parapets. They are intelligent. What horrible feast is it that nightly they celebrate there in silence? On what carrion do they feed? It is the universe that they devour; and they build above it, as they devour it, their dark city like a hollow tomb.… Extraordinary that this city, which seen from here at dusk has so supernatural a beauty, should hide at the core so vile a secret.…”