New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories
Mary did everything perfectly. She walked as if she went to meet the
morning, and must salute it worthily. She carried a weight as a goddess
might bear the infant Bacchus; and her small head, poised upon that
round throat, wore the crown of simplicity, and not of pride. But we
only told how strong she was, and how much she could lift. We loved
Mary, but sensibility had to shrink from those great proportions and
that elemental strength.
One snowy morning, Mary's spiritual vision called her out of our midst,
to which she never came back save as we needed her. The world was very
white that day, when she rose, in her still house, dressed herself
hastily, and roused a neighbor, begging him to harness, and drive her up
to Horn o' the Moon. Folks were sick there, with nobody to take care of
them. The neighbor reasoned, and then refused, as one might deny a
person, however beloved, who lives by the intuitions of an unseen world.
Mary went home again, and, as he believed, to stay. But she had not
hesitated in her allegiance to the heavenly voice. Somehow, through the
blinding snow and unbroken road, she ploughed her way up to Horn o' the
Moon, where she found an epidemic of diphtheria; and there she stayed.
We marveled over her guessing how keenly she was needed; but since she
never explained, it began to be noised abroad that some wandering
peddler told her. That accounted for everything and Mary had no time for
talk. She was too busy, watching with the sick, and going about from
house to house, cooking delicate gruels and broiling chicken for those
who were getting well. It is said that she even did the barn work, and
milked the cows, during that tragic time. We were not surprised. Mary
was a great worker, and she was fond of "creatur's."
Whether she came to care for these stolid people on the height, or
whether the vision counseled her, Mary gave up her house in the village,
and bought a little old dwelling under an overhanging hillside, at Horn
o' the Moon. It was a nest built into the rock, its back sitting snugly
there. The dark came down upon it quickly. In winter, the sun was gone
from the little parlor as early as three o'clock; but Mary did not mind.
That house was her temporary shell; she only slept in it in the
intervals of hurrying away, with blessed feet, to tend the sick, and
hold the dying in untiring arms. I shall never forget how, one morning,
I saw her come out of the door, and stand silent, looking toward the
rosy east. There was the dawn, and there was she, its priestess, while
all around her slept. I should not have been surprised had her lips,
parted already in a mysterious smile, opened still further in a
prophetic chanting to the sun. But Mary saw me, and the alert, answering
look of one who is a messenger flashed swiftly over her face. She
advanced like the leader of a triumphal procession.
"Anybody want me?" she called. "I'll get my bunnit."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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