:: when you are old ::

[based off a poem by william butler yeats]

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A withered woman sat before her fire in the season of cold; the season of lost hope, when sunshine seems an everlasting impossibility. She was not so very old, but she gave the impression of extreme age as she sat hunched over the flame – silent; gray; full of sleep even when her eyes were wide open. Her whole attitude was of one who had seen much and was tired; very, very tired.
   The past years were not what had wrought so much change in her – only of late, with the cold wind and the ever-present drizzle of rain, had she stayed in the warm library, nodding in her chair by the fire, head bent towards the flame. Perhaps she was dreaming of the spring. She had always been active, even through the summer; but with the coming of autumn, she had not ventured far off the porch, and would just sit, gazing into the shadowy distance, alone.
   A change had come upon her, suddenly, and she drew more into herself as the shimmering days wore themselves out into cold, clear nights. She was usually silent now. Before, she had looked for adventures: in books, in places, in people – to read, to see, to discover – to know and understand; but not now. She knew too much.
   When her husband died, she had abruptly sold his estate and moved back to the home of her girlhood – her father’s home, here, in the country – just last spring. With two old servants, she had come and attempted to reopen the dusty, cobwebbed manor. The two succeeded in a few rooms necessary, but, giving the rest of the house up to its desiccated, timeworn memories, now merely went about their regular pursuits – to arouse as little as possible the old ghosts of the estate. But she could not forget.
   Only last spring…. The misty mountains that she could see outside her old window had called her back from the world of people. Long had those mountains been her friends when she was young, long had they been in her dreams when she was older, but she discovered that the old memories did not rest easily on her shoulders. She no longer looked at the mountains – either mist-shrouded in the morning air or hazy blue in the afternoon. The only times she sought them out was in the deep night, as if unable, in the darkness, to separate who she was now from what she was then. Once, she rose from her bed and looked out at them; and there, with the window open to the cool, late summer night’s air, the crickets creaking out a final goodbye, and the last green leaves on the changing trees, she could no longer hide from the truth or shut her eyes to the tears.

   It exhausted her. She could no longer fight the pain. When she started awake in the morning, a sweet, bitter memory was left – a small, nagging tiredness… She held herself together during the day, but, changed after that dark night, she grew quieter, more subdued, attending to the routine, the necessary, and no more.
   She was very, very tired.

   Now, the mountains could not be seen through the veil of rain. It ran in trickles down the windowpane, but she had her eyes fixedly on the fire. Softly, she sighed.
   She stiffly straightened her back and, reaching into a little cranny on one of the many bookshelves, took down a small leather book. Cradling it gently in her hands, she opened it. It creaked softly and let up a puff of dust and the smell of old leather and dried ink. She smoothed the pages and slowly read; as she dreamed, her eyes grew softer than they had been for many a year. And they had been soft once...

   As on a torrent of water through a dry riverbed memories carried her back through the years. She saw herself in this house, so full of laughter and the far-away tinkle of glasses; warm fires in bright rooms; books of poetry and adventure; guests, suitors who came in the evenings for food and drink and talk in the rich old house with so much lighthearted coming and going. She had flitted among them from room to room, full of a glad grace, careless of the dark world outside her bright dominion.
   Life had seemed so full to her, with the music and dancing and compliments every night. Oh, there would be the ultimate choice between all of those who courted her so assiduously; but she wasn’t yet nineteen, and why should it be now? She would shrug it off, sure they would keep – those who came with their titles, their money, their looks and little flatteries.
   It was not much, in her mind, whether their love was for her or what she possessed. Their willingness to please was gratifying – false or true was of no consequence. Each one was willing to devote his time to her; such devotion to her beauty was pleasing… And so she convinced herself that she couldn’t really tell, after all.

   Almost recalled to the present, she sighed. Attentive, handsome, they couldn’t be what she really wanted. None of them knew what she –
But for one. He knew. She realized this now.
   His mind was quick and keen and he loved the same things she did. The others had no care for herself as herself; she knew, though she pretended. But he cared. Her heart thrilled at the heavy spice in the autumn air, the snowflake’s icy glory, the green meadows and sunshine of summer. He understood. Long had she loved the changeable beauty of the mountains when the last rays of sun fell upon their heights; he, too, loved their transient moods, veiling their endurance with the fluctuating seasons.
None but he loved to live the stories in the old works; none but he loved poetry as she did, the beat of the words calling to his heart as they called to hers, making her weep with their desperate, awful beauty. He saw the deep shadows in her eyes, her changing face. He knew and cared. The others? They would have been willing to leave her if she faded – as they did. Time had suddenly worn itself away; she let herself go to the fate she was born to, though pushed from her as long as she could.
But he would not have gone. It was not for her beauty that he loved her, but for her pilgrim soul and its sorrows. If only…
   And yet he had left her, never to come again. Once she had dreamed of a majestic return, a glorious culmination, a joyous farewell and beginning. If only he could have seen it, this vision they did not share. But perhaps he saw, as he looked at her – with eyes tired from hoping, from waiting. The days shortened. He never spoke his love aloud; he could not – or would not? Were they not what society had made them? Was that not an impassable barrier?
   No.
No – she would not leave what she had, and his love felt it. Late and long she had battled, but could never finally let go. Even for him? her heart would ask. Even for him, it would dully answer. If only they could reverse! Undecided, she chose, refusing to reject him by preferring another… until, with a despairing, calm finality, all hope of his returning was gone. She woke – on an oddly bright morning – to the fateful truth that his love could never live again.
   In calm desperation, she married. Late it was, but she and her husband both knew that this was merely an arrangement; her youth past, she had delayed choice too long and he alone was left out of the many that had been. Deep down, she knew that he was the best she could then hope for; when he succumbed to mortality, the best was her groping return, alone, to the house of her younger days. But the true best…the true best had almost been! If only she had wisdom enough to know real worth! Why had he not, in those gone, bright days –

   A log popped, starting her from her reverie. Closing the book, she replaced it. Then, bending down beside the glowing bars, she poked the fire into life. She went to the window, moving slowly, and opened it.
   The rain had paused. Into the stuffy room a slight breeze came, carrying the smell of damp earth. Far above, a cloud moved and the moon shone down; the mountains glittered in the distance. A few stray stars sparkled between the ragged clouds in the calm night. He was there: up beyond the stars she loved to watch. Remember what it was to know he felt as you did? her memory whispered. Closing her eyes against the sudden pain, she could still see the stars in her mind’s eye. His face was forever hidden amid those stars, his love always to pace those enduring mountains – which they had loved together. But, bitterly, love had fled.
   It overwhelmed her. Dropping her head against the sill she murmured for him, “How love fled!” How she had pushed it from her, how she had destroyed all hope, how she had rejected riches, and how her knowledge haunted her.
   For the last time, her tears fell…

Swiftly and abruptly, she shut the window and turned her back on the mountains. Blurred through the pane, they were memories she could never fully hate nor fully love. She sank back in her chair before the fire, and as she stared into it, she heard the wind pick up and throw more rain against the glass.
   The drizzle began again. The fire rose and fell.
   Tired. She was very… very tired.