Alabaster

And there came a woman into the kitchen having a whole fruit, a lemon, sound and unbroken; and the skin of it was cold, and tight, and dimpled like beaten gold, and it was precious, for it had come a long way to that bowl, over water and road, that it might be spent in a moment.

And she took a knife and brake it upon the board; and the oil rose up out of the cut peel in a fine mist, and the whole house was filled with the smell thereof.

But there were certain that had indignation within themselves, and said among themselves, To what purpose is this waste? For the half had been enough, and the rest might have been kept, and wrapped, and set in the cold for another day; or the juice bought ready in a bottle shaped like the fruit, and the labor spared. And they murmured at her, for they loved the sparing of things.

And she answered them not, but set the cut face against the reamer, and bore down. She turned her wrist, and leaned the weight of her shoulder into it, and pressed; and the fruit gave up its water grudgingly, cell by broken cell, and the flesh tore, and the pips fell into the strainer, and the juice ran down pale and clouded and gathered in the cup below. A spoonful. Two. No more, for all the fruit that was spent.

For thou canst not have the juice and keep the fruit also. The one is bought only with the other. That which is pressed out is not to be gathered again, neither returned into the peel from whence it came; and the rind lieth open and empty upon the board, wrung out, and giveth no more.

Let her alone; why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work. The sparing ye have always with you, and the little bottle, and the long shelf of things that keep; but the fresh fruit ye have not always. She hath done what she could. She took a whole thing, and spent it entire, upon a smallness — upon a squeeze of brightness over a fish, a sourness in the water, a thing gone in a mouthful — and counted it no waste, but the very use for which the fruit was grown.

And the smell of it was upon her hands the rest of the evening, in the creases of the knuckles and beneath the nails, that sharp clean gladness; and where the juice had touched a cut it stung, and she knew by the stinging that the work was real. And the emptied halves she kept not, but gave even them to the sink, and to the board its wiping, and to the water its brightening.

For nothing is truly had that is not spent. The fruit kept whole in the bowl keeps only toward its own soft ruin, and rots unbroken, and is thrown out having been nothing to no one. But the fruit that is wrung is gone in the having, and that is the manner of every good thing: it is not stored, but poured; not saved, but used; and wheresoever this small work is done, in whatsoever kitchen, at whatsoever plain and unremembered supper, there also shall it be, that a whole thing was gladly spent for a little brightness, and the sparing ones looked on, and did not understand.

It may be so. It may not.