It was the first fair afternoon in days and Elsa McFarren looked out upon her valley with loving satisfaction.  Quiet had closed in once more in the wake of departing vacationers. All week they had sped up and down her narrow lane, bound for St. Andrews each morning, returning each night to the little cottage up the road nestled in the sloping hills full of the fever and frenzy of the day’s competition.  But they had driven away today in a dull, grey dawn, and she had watched from behind her lace curtains as their car disappeared around the final bend on the road back to Kirriemuir. Their restlessness had hung in the air like a distasteful odor until the sun had burst forth unexpectedly around noon and shooed it away. Then everything had been made new and the valley had become her own again.

           She called to Max, her West Highland terrier, and took up a battered canvas hat and a pair of garden gloves from a table by the door. Slipping her hands into the thin, supple leather, she savored the view, drinking in the air that was faintly sweet and sparkling with clarity. This was her favorite aspect: the valley before her dotted with boulders and drowsy sheep and alive with rabbits; to the south and west the verdant hill pastures sweeping up into bosomy mounts mottled with heather; and diminishing away into the east the misty remnants of valley and hill, as if repeating themselves in succession into all eternity. Behind her cottage to the north the slopes were thick with clustered trees, massive elms and hemlocks that sheltered her from wintry blasts and made her little house seem even smaller than it was.  There was a fanciful wildness to those woods, a fairy-tale quality to the gnarled, mossy roots and dusky, fern-haunted corners that often made her shiver with a delicious terror and turn in relief to the tidiness and sanity of her own garden. 

            It was an Englishwoman’s garden, deep with staunch perennials bearing delicate, ladylike flowers, restrained, gracious, the kind of garden her grandmother in Sussex had taught her to grow. Over fifty years ago and miles and miles away, and yet her mind still echoed those firm, decisive little injunctions for the cultivation of beauty given her as a young woman on the sun-dappled lawn of her grandmother’s garden. She had married a Scotsman, but her proud and loving dowry had been a bit of England itself.    

             Max appeared around the side of the house, his black nose and white paws dingy from a morning of mole-hunting.

            “Naughty fellow,” she clucked under her breath, bending to a leaning delphinium. From where she worked she glanced anxiously up at the rental cottage settled so resolutely where the surrounding hills met. Though vacated only this morning it had a desolate air about it.

            “It probably prefers to be empty rather than stuffed with a pack of loud tourists,” she thought cynically.  But it was high summer, and she knew that there was small chance the little house would stand empty for many weeks to come.

            “I only hope the next tenants aren’t golfers.”

 

            It was at tea time that she heard the rumble of an approaching car. She lifted the almost transparent Limoge cup to her lips and thought, “Perhaps it’s the library van. I’m due for another wave of books.” But this motor, even at a distance, was much smoother than that of her hoped-for visitor. Close to her house the motor slowed to a purr and then stopped altogether. She pulled the curtain aside cautiously. They weren’t coming up the walk—they weren’t even consulting a map. She could just perceive a couple, they appeared to be young, and they were sitting and staring.  In the middle of the road, no less!  They must be Americans! The man was on the driver’s side nearest her, and he was turned towards the woman. But the woman was gazing straight ahead, and her hands were clasped as if in pleasure.   

            “Young Americans,” she muttered to Max as if it were the final insult.

           

            The day which had begun so dour and turned so fine was, with typical Scottish feisty-ness, growing sullen again. A thin wisp of smoke curled up from the chimney of the cottage on the hill. In the gathering gloom of evening, light bloomed from the deep-set windows with a festive air. It was a light more mellow than lamps—candles! When had that old shepherd’s hut last shone with candlelight? In fancy Elsa saw the ruddy glow of the coal stove and the flicker of tapers playing across the whitewashed walls, the warm radiance shining on the slate floor. She had once come upon home this way, in the early years, returning from a walk across the hills, and had stood outside in the chilly dusk looking in at the window and cherishing the scene of her dearest earthly happiness.  And Don had appeared in the door with a loving smile and had ushered her in to a surprise anniversary dinner by the fire. There were candles, and roses—and Don. The scene was suddenly dimmed by unshed tears. She hadn’t let herself think of that in an age.  It was too painful, and she steeled herself against it once more. It was strange how vivid it all was, though, after all this time.

 

            A young woman’s laugh broke upon the quiet afternoon like a sudden burst of song from an unknown bird.  Elsa saw them coming down the green slope from the cottage, watched as the man helped the woman over the stile into the pasture below her house.  She hadn’t been watching for them—not exactly.  But the sight of them warmed a spot in her heart that hadn’t been touched in years.  Not since that horrible telegram from the war office.  She had ceased believing in love that day, the romantic kind of love that gave you wings and then sent you crashing helplessly to earth.  There had been nothing in the world after that but her volunteer work and the hospital and her garden.  And later, this dear cottage where no memories lurked. 

            With youthful, long-legged strides they capered down towards the brook, arms swinging, hand in hand.  The sunlight touched the girl’s hair with a halo, a coronet of gold fit for a young queen of love.  A thin smile broke over Elsa’s face and she ruffled Max’s fur absently.  She had once been crowned as well.  Only it was an ardent schoolboy with a diadem of primroses.  She saw the solemn light in his eyes as he laid it gently on her head and the theatrical flourish with which he swept down in a courtly bow.  Don had always been like that—half boy, half man.  If only they could have stayed young forever in that sunlit world of flower crowns and awkward poetry.  Of course, Don would have made quite a famous poet of himself one day, had he been allowed to live.  But he hadn’t, and she had grown old the day he died.

            Her heart recoiled in pain, but the thoughts had been sweet.  Almost as sweet as the actual moments they represented.  Her well-trained nerves demanded allegiance, but for the first time in almost fifty years she ignored them.  It’s part of it, she told herself, then started.  Don had said that once, or something to that effect.  She remembered it now—‘all love is part pain’.  He had written a poem about it; a line or two came creeping forth from the fair dim past—a blanket by a dappled stream, the remnants of a picnic, Don with his head in her lap reading out loud.

            This blissful pain, this wounding joy

            Stabbing and healing in one celestial stroke     

            A sob caught in her throat and she rose, trembling.  There was a reason she had kept that chest of memory so tightly locked all these years.  It was a Pandora’s Box, full of things she couldn’t bear.  And now that it was opened she had a dreadful feeling that she’d never get it closed again.

 

            They were on their honeymoon; there was no doubt about it.  There was hardly a sign of life about the place till the morning was well-established, and the little blue sports car rarely left for more time than it would take to drive to Kirriemuir and back.  She had seen them once in the village and they wandered about just as dreamily as they did on the moors above the cottage.  Elsa wondered with a twinkle in her eye why they had crossed the ocean just to gaze at each other for a fortnight.  But she knew, of course.  The little house in Devon, she remembered, had been just as remote as these wild glens were for the young Americans.  Don had wanted to take her to some tropical paradise, but funds had been short and the fall term had loomed.  “Someday,” he had said, “I’ll show you moonlight in the palms and water on silver sands.”  She had never minded, though.  She couldn’t imagine a place more mysterious and romantic than those rocky shores of the English coast.  Elsa had never cared much for high adventure.  A quiet afternoon stroll, an evening by the coal fire with books; such moments were flights of pure rapture—with Don.

            She was thinking of him so much that it almost seemed he was with her again.  At the first weakening of resolve the principles that had held her, that had meant to keep her from going mad all these years had crumbled to dust.  She stood among the ruins thinking that perhaps she had been mad all along and only now was her reason returning.  It kept her awake at nights, this clear-eyed sanity, and told her in no uncertain terms what a fool she had been. 

            The moonlight fell upon her bedroom floor in patterns of net lace.  She parted the filmy curtain and looked out upon a still, cold world from which all the warmth of summer had fled.  Slender and white in her clinging gown, silver hair falling down her back, she seemed the ghost of a young woman prematurely aged.   

            “God, forgive me.” 

            A broken whisper, wrung from a deeper grief than she had ever known—deeper even than when she had lost Don.  For this bereavement was for love itself.

            “I’ve refused you both—and only because it hurt.”

            The pain had always seemed the great thing, the enemy from which to shield one’s self.  It was so insignificant now, a bitter drop in an ocean of sweetness. 

            Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.  If a man should give all the substance of his house for love it should be utterly contemned.  Love is strong as death…

            Don, who had loved her as every woman dreams of being loved, had cherished those words.  And God, who loved her more yet, had breathed them.  With joy welling and cresting over her anguish the tears began to fall at last, tears that had been fifty years in coming.  But not too late, and that was all that mattered. 

           

            Max came and laid his head upon Elsa’s foot with a whimper of entreaty. 

            “Alright, old chap, I imagine you’d like a walk,” she soothed absently.  She laid the worn leather journal on the table among the other papers and verses with a loving, lingering touch and glanced out of the window.  “But we’d better be prepared.”  It was lovely out, but she had known Scottish weather of old.

            Elsa collected the umbrella, and Max, alert and eager, frisked about impatiently as she changed into her walking shoes.  She opened the front door and the late afternoon radiance of the valley hailed her with its charms.  The young Americans were out walking as well, savoring what must surely be their last day.  The little house always changed owners on a Saturday, and they had been here two weeks already.  It could have been two months, or two years.

            She smiled at the figures coming towards her shoulder to shoulder.  They hadn’t seen her yet, and she was glad.  She treasured these last few moments to observe them unobserved.  The girl’s hands were full of the foxgloves and ferns that grew in the hollows about the cottage and she flourished them as she went.  Merry banter drifted enticingly down the road, like echoes from Elsa’s own past.  In her heart an answering spark just as lively leapt to reply.   She had not only the past now, but the future as well.  She blessed them with a wordless thanks for being young and in love, among the wisest and richest of the human race.

            They paused.  The girl queen thrust a playfully pointing finger and the young gallant scaled the low fence to procure her fancy.  It was a single wild rose, late blooming and embedded among thorns for Elsa saw him picking his way less recklessly back to the road.  The trophy was exchanged for a kiss over the fence, and it was then that Max saw them.  Barking a friendly greeting he went scampering up the road and writhed about joyously at the girl’s feet. 

            “He’s quite the lady’s man, I’m afraid,” Elsa laughed as she approached.

            “He’s darling,” said the girl, rising from where she had knelt on dog level.  She exchanged a shy smile with her husband.

            “We love your valley,” the young man said.

            “Thank you,” Elsa replied fervently.

            The golden valley turned suddenly grey.  A storm cloud had crept unnoticed over one of the hills to the west and a fierce gust made the girl clutch at her skirt with a gleeful little shriek.  There was a pause, and then she ventured, “We don’t want to leave.”

            Elsa smiled.  A few heavy drops hit the pavement between them.  A helpless look passed from husband to wife, and as the rain came thicker and faster they turned with an apologetic smile and raced back up the road towards the cottage, his arm thrown over her protectively, her head tucked close against his shoulder.  Elsa opened her umbrella and stooped to gather an indignant Max in her arms.  With a look that was every bit a benediction upon the retreating pair she wheeled about slowly and walked back down the hill to the little house among the hemlocks.