"Well, I'm afraid I can't help you now," said Josiah, glancing furtively

at his wife, who had proved to be a termagant with generous impulses

which were brief but explosive.

"Of course your Ma could always come to live with us," suggested Elvira,

obeying the briefest of these impulses. "She'd find plenty to do looking

after the chickens, and the children would keep her from being

lonesome."

Mrs. Oakley's eyes filled with tears. The old hound, having outlived his

master, lay at her feet, and stooping over she stroked his head with a

trembling hand. "But what would become of the farm?" she asked in a

voice that quavered. "I want to die on the farm where I was born."

"We'll stay here alone, Ma and I," Dorinda declared, with the stern

integrity she had won from transgression. "The farm belongs to Ma, and

she and I can take care of it. We don't need a man," she added crisply.

"If I couldn't do better than the men about here, I'd be a mighty poor

farmer."

Elvira breathed more freely, and the wrinkles vanished from Josiah's

forehead. As for Rufus, he had lost interest in the discussion as soon

as it was decided that he might leave the farm in the autumn.

"I'm sure none of us would want to take Ma against her will," Elvira

said, relieved and conciliatory because her generosity had been wasted.

"The place belongs to her anyway, so the rest of us haven't anything to

say about what she does with it." With a habitual jerk, which had

annoyed Dorinda the first moment she saw her, the girl adjusted the belt

of her skirt and rested her hands on her rapidly spreading hips.

"You needn't worry about Ma," Dorinda rejoined firmly. "I am going to

take care of her." Her one wish, she felt, was to get Elvira and Josiah

out of the house. Even Rufus was less depressing. Rufus at least had

good looks; but Josiah and Elvira existed in her mind only as appalling

examples of inherent futility. While she looked at Josiah, it seemed to

her that failure oozed out of the very pores of his skin. Though he

worked from morning till night, he was hampered by a fumbling slowness

which reminded Dorinda of the efforts of a half-witted person. Yet her

father, in spite of his ignorance, had possessed an industry that was

tireless, while her mother was afflicted by a veritable mania of energy.

Was it a matter of circumstances, after all, not of heredity? Had the

more active strain succumbed at last to the climatic inertia? Well, if

the fight had narrowed down to one between herself and her surroundings,

she was determined to conquer. Beneath her sombre brows her eyes looked

out like caged bluebirds. She was wearing a black calico dress which had

once belonged to Miss Seena Snead, and the mourning brought out vividly

the dusk of her hair and the bright red of her lips. "There's no use

talking to me. I've made up my mind," she said.

An hour later, when Josiah and Elvira had gone home, Dorinda helped her

mother to take off her mourning and straighten the chamber in which

Joshua had lain.

"It's the smell of mourning I can't stand," said the girl, while she

folded the crape veil and laid it away in the bandbox. "Do you think

I'll have to wear it?"

"It wouldn't be respectful not to," Mrs. Oakley replied, and she asked

after a minute: "What do you want with those overalls of Rufus's that

you took upstairs?"

Dorinda turned from the wardrobe and looked at her. "They are old ones

I'm patching," she answered. "I am going to wear them when I'm milking.

Those Jerseys have never been milked by a woman."

"I s'pose they'd get used to it."

"They might, but it's easier for me to wear overalls than to break them.

You can't farm in skirts anyway."

"You ain't going to wear them on the farm, are you?"

"If I can farm better in them, I'm going to wear them."

Mrs. Oakley sighed. "Well, I hope nobody will see you."

"I don't care," Dorinda replied stubbornly. "I'm going to milk my cows

my own way. I've got some common sense," she added sternly, "and I'm the

only person, man or woman, in the county who has."

The old woman's face was as inanimate as a mask, but her eyes were

fixed, with their look of prophetic doom, on the great pine in the

graveyard. "I can't help thinking," she murmured, "how your father used

to lie here day after day and look at that big pine. It seems as if that

tree meant more to him than anything human."

Dorinda followed her gaze. "In a way it did," she said slowly, as if

some inscrutable mystery were dissolving in a flood of surprise. "In a

different way."

With a band of crape in her hands, Mrs. Oakley stared up at the

harp-shaped boughs. "I reckon it's a heathenish way to think about

things," she observed presently, "but I can't help feeling there's a

heap of comfort in it."

When the room had been cleaned and the mourning pinned up again in

newspapers, Dorinda begged her mother to rest before Rufus came back to

supper.

"I couldn't, daughter, not with all I've got on my mind," Mrs. Oakley

replied firmly. "I remember when the doctor tried to get your father to

give up for a while, he'd shake his head and answer, 'Doctor, I don't

know how to stop.' That's the trouble with me, I reckon. I don't know

how to stop."

"If you choose to kill yourself, I don't see how I can prevent it."

Dorinda's voice wavered with exasperation. If only her mother would

listen to reason, she felt, both of their lives would be so much easier.

But did mothers ever listen to reason? "I'm going to walk up to Poplar

Spring and look at the woods you wrote me about," she added. "I hope we

shan't have to sell them and put the money into the land."

"Your father was holding on to that timber to bury us with. There are

all the funeral expenses to come."

"Yes, I know." Dorinda regarded her thoughtfully. "Poor Pa, it was all

he had and he wanted to hold on to it. But, you see,"--her tone

sharpened to the bitter edge of desperation--"I am depending upon my

butter to bury us both, and who knows but your chickens may supply us

with tombstones."

"I hope New York didn't turn you into a scoffer, Dorinda."

Dorinda laughed. "New York didn't get a chance, Ma. Pedlar's Mill had

done it first."

"Well, there ain't anything too solemn for some folks to joke about. You

ain't goin' out in Seena Snead's black dress, are you?"

"She's gone out of mourning, so she gave it to me."

"I'd think you'd hate to take charity."

There were times when it seemed to Dorinda that she could not breathe

within the stark limitations of her mother's point of view. As she ran

out of the room and the house, without heeding Mrs. Oakley's request

that she should wear a hat at least on the day of the funeral, she asked

herself if this aimless nagging was all that she could expect in the

future. She was fond of her mother; but fondness, strangely enough, did

not seem to make it easier for people to bear one another's tempers.

The path to Poplar Spring ran beside the eighteen-acre field, and she

stopped amid the dusty fennel and ragweed to inspect the work of the

last two days. The broomsedge had been partly cut down and burned, and

the blackened ruins waited now for the final obliteration. "It will be

hard work to get good grass here," she thought, "but if I keep turning

cowpeas under, I may bring up the soil in time." In the pasture, beyond

a rail fence, the grass was rank and high, for only Dan and Beersheba

had grazed there for the last four or five years. The solitary cow, when

they were fortunate as to own one, lived on the lawn or what was called

"the home field," where Mrs. Oakley milked in summer. Across the road

she saw the scantily fenced west meadow, where her father had sown his

winter wheat, and her eyes filled with tears as she gazed on the

sprinkling of green over the earth. While she stood there she remembered

the look on his face when he lay in his coffin; a look which was

austere, inaccessible, with a reproachful wonder beneath its mask of

solemnity, as if he were still asking life why it had crushed him.

"Whatever I give, the farm will be always mine," she thought. "That was

the way he felt. The farm isn't human and it won't make you suffer. Only

human things break your heart." Everything appeared so simple when she

regarded it through the film of sentiment that obscured her judgment.

Kinship with the land was filtered through her blood into her brain; and

she knew that this transfigured instinct was blended of pity, memory,

and passion. Dimly, she felt that only through this fresh emotion could

she attain permanent liberation of spirit.

Moving away, she followed the path which threaded the scrub pines on the

border of the broomsedge. Presently she distinguished the blur of Poplar

Spring in the distance, and toward the east the acres of fair timber

which had matured since her great-grandfather's death. In her new

reverence for her father she shrank from cutting down the tall trees.

"It would be slaughter," she said to herself. "I'll let the woods stand

as long as I can."

Overhead, the pines were soughing in a light wind, and for a moment or

two the sound of footsteps behind her was scarcely louder than the

whispering trees. Then, with a start, she realized that she was

followed, and glancing round, she saw Jason walking over the scarred

field.

"I know you didn't want me at the funeral, Dorinda," he said, "but it

was all I could do to show my respect for your father. He was one of the

best men who ever lived."

Her breast quivered with pain, but she moved on without appearing to be

aware of his presence.

"I was afraid you were angry because I came," he continued.

At this her pride was swallowed up in bitterness, and she stopped and

looked back. "You had no right to come. You knew I did not want you

there."

Without replying to her charge, he stared at her as if he were amazed by

the change in her face. "This is the first time you've looked at me

since you came home," he said. "You've treated me as if I were the dirt

under your feet."

Her hand was on the slender bough of a pine, and stripping the needles

from the branch, she flung them out on the wind with a passionate

gesture. Over the chaos in her mind there darted the shadow of a regret.

"If only I had killed him that night!"

"Even now, you won't let your eyes rest on me," he complained. "If you'd

given me a chance, I'd have done anything you wanted. But you never gave

me a chance. You never listened."

Her gaze, which had been fixed on the horizon beyond him, swept back to

his face. "Your following me won't make me listen."

"If only you knew what I've suffered."

She was looking at him now with merciless eyes. For this thing she had

ruined her life! Then, before the thought had left her mind, she

realized that in his presence, with her eyes on his face, she was

farther away from him than she had been in New York. Yesterday, he had

had power over her senses; to-morrow, he might have power again over her

memory; but at this instant, while they stood there, so close together

that she could almost feel his breath on her face, her senses and her

memory alike were delivered from the old torment of love.

"My nerve is going," he said weakly, attempting to soften her. "I've

started drinking like Father."

Looking at him, she admitted that it was only her feeling for him, not

the man himself, that had changed. Superficially, in spite of excessive

drinking, he was as attractive as he had ever been; yet this appeal,

which she had found so irresistible two years ago, failed now to awaken

the faintest tremor in her heart. The contrast between his brown-black

eyes and his red hair seemed to her artificial: there was something

repellent to her in the gleam of his white teeth through his short red

moustache. These were the physical details that had once affected her so

deeply; these traits which she saw now, for the first time, in the

spectral light of disenchantment.

"Can you never understand," she asked suddenly, "that I don't hate you

because you mean to me--just nothing."

"You are sending me straight to the dogs."

She laughed. How theatrical men were! Beneath her ridicule, she felt the

cruelty which gnaws like a worm at the heart of emotion in its decay.

"Why should I care?" she demanded.

"You mean you wouldn't care if I were to die a drunkard like my father?"

His voice trembled, and she saw that he was wrestling with man's

inability to believe that a woman's love can perish while his own still

survives.

"No, I shouldn't care."

"You're hard, Dorinda, as hard as a stone."

Her smile was exultant. "Yes, I am hard. I'm through with soft things."

Turning her back on him, she walked rapidly away over the ploughed

ground in the direction of the house. Oh, if the women who wanted love

could only know the infinite relief of having love over!

XI

On an afternoon in October, Dorinda stood under the harp-shaped pine in

the graveyard and looked down on the farm.

The drift of autumn was in the air; the shadows from the west were

growing longer; and in a little while Nimrod, the farm boy, would let

down the bars by the watering-trough, and the seven Jersey cows would

file sleepily across the road and the lawn to the cow-barn. At the first

glimpse of Nimrod she would run down and slip into her overalls. Ever

since the cows had come from Green Acres, she had milked them morning

and evening, and she was wondering now how many more she could handle

with only Fluvanna to help her. Only by doing the work herself and

keeping a relentless eye on every detail, could she hope to succeed in

the end. If she were once weak enough to compromise with the natural

carelessness of the negroes, she knew that the pails and pans would not

be properly scalded, and the milk would begin to lose its quality.

Fluvanna was the superior of most ignorant white women; but even

Fluvanna, though she was, as Dorinda said to herself, one in a thousand,

would slight her work as soon as she was given authority over others.

There were times when it seemed to Dorinda that this instinct to slight

was indigenous to the soil of the South. In the last six months she had

felt the temptation herself. There had been hours of weariness when it

had seemed to her that it was better to be swift and casual than to be

slow and thorough; but she had always suppressed the impulse before it

was translated into outward negligence. Would her power of resistance

survive, she wondered, or would it yield inevitably to the surrounding

drought of energy?

Six months were gone now, and how hard she had worked! She thought of

the mornings when she had risen before day, eaten a hurried breakfast by

the crack of dawn, and milked the cows by the summer sunrise. From the

moment the warm milk frothed into the pails until the creamy butter was

patted into moulds and stamped with the name Old Farm beneath the device

of a harp-shaped pine, there was not a minute detail of the work that

was left to others. Even the scalding of the churns, the straining and

skimming of the milk in the old-fashioned way without a separator,--all

these simple tasks came under her watchful eyes. When the first supply

of butter was sent off, she waited with nervous dread for the verdict.

The price had seemed extravagant, for selling directly to her customer

she had asked thirty cents a pound, while butter in Pedlar's store was

never higher than ninepence in summer and a shilling in winter, measured

in the old English terms which were still commonly used in Queen

Elizabeth County.

"It seems a mighty high price," her mother had objected.

"I know, but Mrs. Faraday told me to ask more. She said the dairy would

get a dollar a pound for the very best. Some people are always ready to

pay a high price, and they value a thing more if they pay too much for

it. I found out all I could about butter making in New York, and I'm

sure nobody could have taken more trouble. It tasted like flowers."

"Well, perhaps--" Mrs. Oakley had sounded dubious. "We'll wait and see."

When the letter and check came together, Dorinda's spirits had soared on

wings. The hotel and the dairy would take all that she could supply of

that quality; and though she had known that her success was less

fortuitous than appeared on the surface, she had not paused to inquire

whether it was owing to influence or to accident. "If everything goes

well, I'll have twenty-five cows by next fall," she said hopefully, "and

Ebenezer and Mary Joe Green to help Fluvanna."

"You always jump so far ahead, Dorinda."

"I'm made that way. I can't help it. If I didn't live in the future, I

couldn't stand things as they are."

Now, in the soft afternoon light, she stretched her arms over her head

with a gesture of healthy fatigue. The aromatic scent of the pine was in

her nostrils. In the sun-steeped meadows below there was the murmurous

chanting of grasshoppers. At the hour she felt peaceful and pleasantly

drowsy, and all her troubles were lost in the sensation of physical

ease. She was thinner than ever; her muscles were hard and elastic; the

colour of her skin was burned to a pale amber; and the curves of her

rich mouth were firmer and less appealingly feminine. In a few years the

work of the farm would probably coarsen her features; but at

twenty-three she was still young enough to ripen to a maturer beauty.

Though her hands were roughened by work and the nails were stained and

broken, she wasted no regret upon the disfigurement of her body as long

as her senses remained benumbed by toil. She slept now without dreaming.

This alone seemed to her to be worth any sacrifice of external softness.

Her glance travelled over the cornfield, where the shocks were gathered

in rows amid the stubble, and she reflected that the harvest had been

better than usual. Then her eyes passed along the orchard path to the

new cow-barn, and she watched the figure of William Fairlamb climbing

down from the roof. An agreeable sense of possession stole into her

mind, while she looked from the cow-barn to the back of the house, and

saw her mother moving along the path from the porch. There were a

hundred and fifty hens in the poultry yard now, and it seemed to Dorinda

that the old woman's happiness had simmered down into an enjoyment of

chickens. Though she still worshipped Rufus, he was only a

disappointment and an increasing anxiety. Of late he had done no work on

the farm; his days were spent in hunting with Ike Pryde or Adam Snead,

and it was evident to Dorinda that he was beginning to drink too much

bad whiskey. It would be a relief, she felt, when November came and he

went away for the winter.

Turning her head, as she prepared to leave the graveyard, she glanced

beyond the many-coloured autumn scene to the distant chimneys of Five

Oaks. How far-off was the time when the sight of those red chimneys

against a blue or grey sky would not stab into her heart? Her love was

dead; and her regret clung less to the thought that love had ended in

disappointment than to the supreme tragedy that love ended at all.

Nothing endured. Everything perished of its own inner decay. That, after

all, was the gnawing worm at the heart of experience. If either her love

or her hatred had lasted, she would have found less bitterness in the

savour of life.

For the first few weeks after her meeting with Jason on the edge of the

pines, she had been enveloped in profound peace. Then, gradually, it

seemed to her that the farther she moved away from him in reality, the

closer he approached to her hidden life. As the days went by, the

freedom she had won in his presence wore off like the effects of an

anodyne, and the bondage of the nerves and the senses began to tighten

again. Never, since she had looked into his face and had told herself

that she was indifferent, had she known complete disillusionment. The

trouble was, she discovered, that instead of remembering him as she had

last seen him, her imagination created images which her reason denied.

Not only her pain, but the very memory of pain that had once been, could

leave, she found, a physical soreness.

Beyond the fields and the road the sun was sinking lower, and the

western sky was stained with the colour of autumn fruits. While she

watched the clouds, Dorinda remembered the heart of a pomegranate that

she had seen in a window in New York; and immediately she was swept by a

longing for the sights and sounds of the city. "There's no use thinking

of that now," she said to herself, as she left the brow of the hill and

walked down the path through the orchard. "Like so many other things, it

is only when you look back on it that you seem to want it. While I was

in New York I was longing to be away. There comes Nimrod with the cows,

and Fluvanna bringing the milk pails."

On the back porch her mother was drying apples, for the apple crop had

been good, and the cellar was already stored with russets and winesaps.

"We ought to have dried apples enough to last us till next year," Mrs.

Oakley remarked, while she wiped the discoloured blade of the knife on

her apron. "The whole time I was slicing these apples, I couldn't help

thinking how partial your father was to dried fruit, and last fall there

were hardly any apples fit to keep." Raising her hand to her eyes, she

squinted in the direction from which her daughter had come. "I can't

make out who that is running across the cornfield, but whoever it is,

he's in a mighty big hurry."

Dorinda followed her gaze. "It's Rufus. He looks as if something were

after him."

Mrs. Oakley's face was twisted into what was called her "neuralgic

look." "He promised me to mend that churn before night," she said in a

dissatisfied tone. "But I haven't laid eyes on him since dinner time. He

goes too much in bad company. I haven't got a particle of use for Ike

Pryde and those two Kittery boys over by Plumtree."

Dorinda nodded. "I'm glad he is going away. The sooner, the better."

"I reckon he has just recollected the churn." Mrs. Oakley's tone was

without conviction, and she added presently, "He certainly does look

scared, doesn't he?"

"I wonder what could have frightened him?" As the boy drew nearer,

Dorinda saw that he was panting for breath and that his usually florid

face was blanched to a leaden pallor. "What on earth has happened,

Rufus?" she called sharply.

He waved angrily to her to be silent. His palmetto hat was in his hand,

and when he reached the porch, he hurled it through the open door into

the hall. Though his breath came in gasps as if he were stifling for

air, he picked up a hammer from one of the benches, and without stopping

to rest, bent over the broken churn at the side of the step.

"What on earth has happened, Rufus?" Dorinda asked again. She saw that

her mother was trembling with apprehension, and the sight exasperated

her against Rufus.

"You ought to have let me go away last spring," the boy replied in a

truculent tone. He lifted the hammer above his head and, still wheezing

from his race, drove a nail crookedly into the bottom of the churn. His

hand trembled, and Dorinda noticed that the swinging blow fell unevenly.

"You haven't done anything you oughtn't to, have you, son?" his mother

inquired shrilly.

Rufus turned his head and stared at her in moody silence. Though his

handsome face wore his usual sulky frown, Dorinda suspected that his

resentful manner was a veil that covered an inner disturbance. His dark

eyes held a smouldering fire, as if fear were waiting to leap out at a

sound, and the hand in which he clutched the hammer had never stopped

shaking.

"Don't you let on I wasn't here, no matter who asks you," he said

doggedly. "It wasn't my fault anyway. There isn't anybody coming, is

there?"

"No, that's Nimrod bringing up the cows," Dorinda rejoined impatiently.

"I must put on my overalls."

Whatever happened, the cows must be milked, she reflected as she entered

the house. This morning and evening ritual of the farm had become as

inexorable as law. Hearts might be broken, men might live or die, but

the cows must be milked.

When she came back from the dairy, Rufus had disappeared, but her

mother, who was preparing supper, beckoned her into the kitchen. "I

haven't found out yet what's the matter," whispered the old woman. "He

won't open his mouth, though I can see that he's terribly upset about

something. I'm worried right sick."

"He's probably got into a quarrel with somebody. You know how

overbearing he is."

"I reckon I spoiled him." Mrs. Oakley's lip trembled while she poured a

little coffee into a cup and then poured it back again into the

coffee-pot. "Your father used to tell me I made a difference because he

was the youngest. I s'pose I oughtn't to have done it, but it's hard to

see how I could have helped it. He was a mighty taking child, was

Rufus."

"Where is he now?"

"Up in his room. I've called him to supper. He's loaded his gun again,

but he didn't seem to want me to notice, and he's put it back in the

corner behind the door."

"Oh, well, try not to worry about it, Ma. Some fool's play most likely.

Can I help you get supper? I'll be straight back as soon as I've slipped

out of these overalls. There's a lot of work for me afterwards in the

dairy."

She ran upstairs to her room, and on the way down, as she passed Rufus's

door, she called cheerfully, "Rufus, aren't you coming to supper?"

To her surprise, his door opened immediately, as if he had been hiding

behind it, and he came out and followed her meekly downstairs into the

kitchen. His excitement had apparently left him, but his healthy colour

had not returned and his eyes looked strained and bloodshot. Bad

whiskey, she thought, though she said as amiably as she could, "If I

were you, I'd go to New York next week even if the job isn't ready."

He looked at her gratefully. "I was just thinking I'd better do that."

His manner was so conciliatory that it made her vaguely uneasy. Jason

had been like that, she remembered, in the weeks before he had jilted

her, and, unjustly or not, she had come to regard suavity in men with

suspicion. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Rufus if he had got

into a scrape; but she decided, as she brought his supper to the table,

that it was a situation which she had better ignore. No good had ever

come, she reflected with the ripe wisdom of experience, of putting

questions to a man. What men wished you to know, and occasionally what

they did not wish you to know, they would divulge in their own good

time. Her mother, she knew, had spent her life trying to make men over,

and what had come of her efforts except more trouble and stiffer

material to work on?

When she sat down at the table, she expected her mother to begin her

usual interrogation; but the old woman allowed Rufus to finish his

supper undisturbed. Even when the last cake was lifted from the

gridiron, and Mrs. Oakley dropped into her chair behind the tin

coffee-pot, she was still silent. The cords in her throat twitched and

strained when she raised a cup to her lips, and after a vain effort to

swallow, she pushed her plate away with the food untasted.

"Poor Ma," thought the girl, watching the drawn grey face, where the

veins in the temples bulged in knots of pain, "can she never have

peace?" A longing seized her to fold the spare frame in her young arms

and speak comforting words; but the habit of reserve was like an iron

mould from which she could not break away. Nothing but death was strong

enough to shatter that inherited restraint and resolve it into

tenderness. While words of affection struggled to her lips, all she said

was, "You look worn out. Is your neuralgia worse?"

"No, it ain't worse. I've got a stabbing pain in my temple, that's all."

Rising from her chair, she began to mix cornbread and gravy for Rambler

and Flossie. Though she tottered when she moved, she put aside Dorinda's

offer of help. "I'm used to doing things," she said, without stopping

for an instant. "You and Rufus had better go along about what you want

to do."

The hound and the cat were at her skirts, and she had just put the tin

plates down for them and taken up the empty dish, when there was a sound

of wheels on the rocks outside, and Dorinda, who was watching Rufus, saw

him turn a muddy grey, like the discoloured whitewash on the walls.

"Don't you let on that I was off this afternoon, Ma," he whispered

hoarsely.

"I declare, Rufus, you talk as if you were crazy," snapped Mrs. Oakley,

flinching from a dart of neuralgia. Though her tone was merely one of

irritation, her hands trembled so violently that the china dish she was

holding dropped to the floor and crashed into bits. "This china never

was a particle of account!" she exclaimed, as she bent over to pick up

the pieces.

"I wonder who it can be this time of night?" Dorinda said more lightly

than she would have believed possible.

"Maybe I'd better go," Rufus jerked out.

"You sit right down, son," his mother retorted tartly.

Going into the hall, Dorinda opened the front door and stood waiting in

the square of lamplight on the threshold. It was a dark night, for the

moon had not yet risen, and all that she could distinguish was what

appeared to be the single shape of a horse and buggy. Only when the

vehicle had jogged up the slope among the trees, and the driver had

alighted and ascended the steps of the porch, did she recognize the

squat shape and flabby features of Amos Wigfall, the sheriff. She had

known him at the store in his political capacity as the familiar of

every voter; yet friendly as he had always appeared to be, she could not

repress a feeling of apprehension while she held out her hand. People,

especially farmers, she knew, did not venture out, except with good

reason, on bad roads after dark.

"Why, it's you, Mr. Wigfall!" she exclaimed, with cheerful hospitality.

"Ma, Mr. Wigfall is here. I hope you've got some supper for him." And

all the time she was thinking, "I might have known Rufus had done

something foolish. Poor Ma!"

The sheriff heaved his bulky figure into the house. "I ain't come to

supper, Dorinda," he said heartily. "Don't you go and get yo' Ma upset.

I don't reckon it's anything to worry about. I wouldn't have come if I

could have helped it."

Still grasping the girl's hand, he stood blinking apologetically in the

glare of the lamp. His face was so bloated and so unctuous that it might

have been the living embodiment of the fee system upon which it had

fattened. He was chewing tobacco as he spoke, and wheeling abruptly he

spat a wad into the night before he followed Dorinda down the hall to

the kitchen. "The fact is I've come about Rufus," he explained, adding,

"I hope I ain't intrudin', mum," as he whipped off his old slouch hat

with an air of gallantry which reminded Dorinda of the burlesque of some

royal cavalier.

"Oh, no, you ain't intruding, Mr. Wigfall," Mrs. Oakley replied. "What

was it you said about Rufus?"

"He said he was sure it wasn't anything to worry about," Dorinda

hastened to explain. She did not glance at Rufus while she spoke, yet

she was aware that he had risen and was scowling at their visitor.

"Wall, as between friends," the sheriff remarked ingratiatingly, "I hope

thar ain't a particle of truth in the charge; but Peter Kittery was

found dead over by Whistling Spring this evening, and Jacob has got it

into his head that 'twas Rufus that shot him."

"It's a lie!" Rufus shouted furiously. "I never went near Whistling

Spring this evening. Ma knows I was mending her churn for her from

dinner till supper time."

"Wall, I'm downright glad of that, son," Mr. Wigfall returned, and he

looked as if he meant it, fee or no fee. "Yo' Pa was a good friend to me

when he got a chance, and I shouldn't like to see his son mixed up in a

bad business. Jacob says you and Peter had a fuss over cards last night

at the store. But if you ain't been near Whistling Spring," he

concluded, with triumphant logic, "it stands to reason that you couldn't

have done it. You jest let him come along with me, mum," he added after

a pause, as he turned to Mrs. Oakley. "I'll take good care of him, and

send him back to you as soon as the hearing is over to-morrow. Thar

ain't no need for you to worry a mite."

"I never saw Peter after last night!" Rufus cried out in a storm of rage

and terror. "I never went near Whistling Spring. Ma knows I was working

over her old churn all the evening."

His words and his tone struck with a chill against Dorinda's heart. Why

couldn't the boy be silent? Why was he obliged, through some obliquity

of nature, invariably to appear as a braggart and a bully? While she

stood there listening to his furious denial of guilt, she was as

positive that he had killed Peter Kittery as if she had been on the

spot.

For a minute there was silence; then a new voice began to speak, a voice

so faint and yet so shrill that it was like the far-off whistle of a

train. At first the girl did not recognize her mother's tone, and she

glanced quickly at the door with the idea that a stranger might have

entered after the sheriff.

"It couldn't have been Rufus," the old woman said, with that whistling

noise. "Rufus was here with me straight on from dinner time till supper.

I had him mending my old churn because I didn't want to use one of

Dorinda's new ones. Dorinda went off in the fields to watch the hands,"

she continued firmly, "but Rufus was right here with me the whole

evening."

When she had finished speaking, she reached for a chair and sat down

suddenly, as if her legs had failed her. Rufus broke into a nervous

laugh which had an indecent sound, Dorinda thought, and Mr. Wigfall

heaved a loud sigh of relief.

"Wall, you jest come over to-morrow and tell that to the magistrate," he

said effusively. "I don't reckon there could be a better witness for

anybody. Thar ain't nobody round Pedlar's Mill that would be likely to

dispute yo' word." Slinging his arm, he gave Rufus a hearty slap on the

back. "I'm sorry I've got to take you along with me, son, but I hope you

won't bear me any grudge. It won't hurt you to spend a night away from

yo' Ma, and my wife, she'll be glad to have you sample her buckwheat

cakes. I hope you're having good luck with your chickens," he remarked

to Mrs. Oakley as an afterthought. "My wife has been meaning to get over

and look at yo' white leghorns."

"Tell her I'll be real glad to see her whenever she can get over," Mrs.

Oakley replied, as she made an effort to struggle to her feet. "Ain't

you going to take any clean clothes to wear to-morrow, Rufus? That shirt

looks right mussed."

Rufus shook his head. "No, I'm not. If they want me, they can take me as

I am."

"Wall, he looks all right to me," the sheriff observed, with jovial

mirth. "I'll expect you about noon," he said, as he shook hands. "Don't

you lose a minute's sleep. Thar ain't nothing in the world for you to

worry about."

Picking up the kerosene lamp from the table, Dorinda went out on the

porch to light the way to the gate. "There's a bad place near the

'rockery,'" she cautioned.

He had climbed heavily into the buggy, and Rufus was in the act of

mounting between the wheels, when Mrs. Oakley came out of the house and

thrust a parcel wrapped in newspaper into the boy's hand. "There's a

clean collar and your comb," she said, drawing quickly back. "Be sure

not to forget them in the morning."

XII

Standing there on the porch, with the light from the lamp she held

flaring out against the silver black of the night sky, Dorinda watched

the buggy crawling down the dangerous road to the gate. Something dark

and cold had settled over her thoughts. She could not shake it off

though she told herself that it was unreasonable for her to feel so

despondent. As if despondency, she added, were the product of reason!

Mother love was a wonderful thing, she reflected, a wonderful and a

ruinous thing! It was mother love that had helped to make Rufus the

mortal failure he was, and it was mother love that was now accepting, as

a sacrifice, the results of this failure. Mrs. Oakley was a pious and

God-fearing woman, whose daily life was lived beneath the ominous shadow

of the wrath to come; yet she had deliberately perjured herself in order

that a worthless boy might escape the punishment which she knew he

deserved.

"I'm not like that," Dorinda thought. "I couldn't have done it." At the

bottom of her heart, in spite of her kinship to Rufus, there was an

outraged sense, not so much of justice as of economy. The lie appeared

to her less sinful than wasted. After all, why should not Rufus be held

responsible for his own wickedness? She was shocked; she was

unsympathetic; she was curiously exasperated. Her mother's attitude to

Rufus impressed her as sentimental rather than unselfish; and she saw in

this painful occurrence merely one of the first fruits of that long

weakness. Since she had been brought so close to reality she had had

less patience with evasive idealism. "I suppose I'm different from other

women," she meditated. "I may have lost feeling, or else it was left out

of me when I was born. Some women would have gone on loving Jason no

matter how he treated them; but I'm not made that way. There's something

deep down in me that I value more than love or happiness or anything

outside myself. It may be only pride, but it comes first of all."

The buggy had disappeared into the night, and lowering the lamp, she

turned and entered the house. As she closed the door the mocking screech

of an owl floated in, and she felt that the frost was slipping over the

threshold. All the ancient superstitions of the country gathered in her

mind. It was foolish, she knew, to let herself remember these things at

such a time; but she had lost control of her imagination, which galloped

ahead dragging her reason after it.

In the kitchen she found her mother bending over the dish-pan with her

arms plunged in soapsuds.

"Come to bed, Ma. I'll finish the dishes."

To her surprise, Mrs. Oakley did not resist. The spirit of opposition

was crushed out of her, and she tottered as she turned away to wipe her

hands on a cup towel.

"I reckon I'd better," she answered meekly. "I don't feel as if I could

stand on my feet another minute."

Putting her strong young arm about her, Dorinda led her across the hall

into her bedroom. While the girl struck a match and lighted the lamp on

the table, she saw that her mother was shaking as if she had been

stricken with palsy.

"I'll help you undress, Ma."

"I can manage everything but my shoes, daughter. My fingers are too

swollen to unbutton them."

"Don't you worry. I'll put you to bed." As she turned down the bed and

smoothed out the coarse sheets and the patchwork quilt, it seemed to

Dorinda that the inanimate objects in the room had borrowed pathos from

their human companions. All the stitches that had gone into this quilt,

happy stitches, sad stitches, stitches that had ended in nothing! Her

eyes filled with tears, and she looked quickly away. What was it in

houses and furniture that made them come to life in hours of suspense

and tear at the heartstrings?

Mrs. Oakley was undressing slowly, folding each worn, carefully mended

garment before she placed it on a chair near the foot of the bed.

"Do you reckon they will do anything to Rufus?" she asked presently in a

quavering voice.

She had released her hair from the tight coil at the back of her head,

and it hung now, combed and plaited by Dorinda, in a thin grey braid on

her shoulders. The childish arrangement gave a fantastic air to the

shadow on the whitewashed wall.

"Not after what you said. Didn't you hear Mr. Wigfall tell you that he

was taking him just for the night?"

Mrs. Oakley turned her head, and the shadow at her back turned with her.

"Yes, I heard him. Well, if the Lord will give me strength to go through

with it, I'll never ask for anything else."

"He'll be more likely to help you if you get some sleep and stop

worrying. The Lord helps good sleepers." Though she spoke flippantly,

she was frightened by the look in her mother's face.

"I don't feel as if I could close my eyes." Mrs. Oakley had climbed into

bed, and was lying, straight and stiff as an effigy, under the quilt.

"Don't you think it would be a comfort if we were to read a chapter in

the Bible?"

Dorinda broke into a dry little laugh. "No, I don't. The only comforting

thing I can imagine is to get my head on a pillow. I've got seven cows

to milk by sunrise, and that is no easy job."

"Yes, you'd better go," her mother assented reluctantly, and she added

with a sigh, "I can't help feeling that something dreadful is going to

happen."

"You won't prevent it by lying awake. Don't get up in the morning until

you're obliged to milk the cows before day and get Fluvanna to help

about breakfast as soon as she comes. It's a long way to Queen Elizabeth

Courthouse, and we'll have to allow plenty of time for the horses. Do

you want anything more?" She resisted an impulse to stoop and kiss the

wrinkled cheek because she knew that the unusual exhibition of

tenderness would embarrass them both. "Shall I put out the lamp for

you?"

"No, I like a little light. You can see so many things in the dark after

the fire goes out."

Dorinda moved away as noiselessly as she could; but she had barely

crossed the hall before she heard a muffled sound in the room, and knew

that her mother was out of bed and on her knees. "I can't do anything,"

thought the girl desperately. "It is going to kill her, and I can't do

anything to prevent it." Every muscle in her body ached from the strain

of the day while she washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen for the

next morning. She realized that she should have to do most of her farm

work before sunrise, and she decided that, in case Fluvanna came late,

it would be well to put out whatever she needed for breakfast. After

that--well, even if Rufus had murdered somebody, she couldn't keep awake

any longer.

In the morning, when she came back into the house after milking, she

found that her mother was already in the kitchen, and that a pot of

coffee was bubbling on the stove. Of course Fluvanna, on the day when

she was particularly needed, had contrived to be late.

"I told you not to worry about breakfast, Ma," Dorinda said, provoked in

spite of her pity.

"I know you did, but I couldn't lie in bed any longer. I was so afraid

you might oversleep yourself and not wake me in time." She was the

victim of a nervous apprehension lest they should be too late for the

magistrate, and it was futile to attempt to reason her out of her folly.

"You sit right down in your overalls and drink your coffee while it's

hot," she continued, stirring restlessly. "I've got some fried eggs and

bacon to keep up your strength."

"My strength is all right." Dorinda washed her hands and then came over

to the table where breakfast was waiting for her. "The sun isn't up yet,

and we can't start before day."

"Well, I wanted to be ready in plenty of time. You'll have to be away

from the farm all day, won't you?"

"I don't know," Dorinda rejoined briskly. "Fluvanna and Nimrod will have

to manage the best they can. I'm not going to worry about it. People can

always be spared easier than they think they can."

Her animation, however, was wasted, for her mother was not following

her. Mrs. Oakley had grown so restless that she could not sit still at

the table, and she jumped up and ran to the stove or the safe whenever

she could find an excuse. She wore the strained expression of a person

who is listening for an expected sound and is afraid of missing it by a

moment of inadvertence. Already, before lighting the stove, she had put

on her Sunday dress of black alpaca, and had protected it in front by an

apron of checked blue and white gingham. If she had had the courage,

Dorinda suspected, she would have cooked breakfast in her widow's

bonnet, with the streamer of rusty crape at her back.

"Is that somebody going along the road?" she inquired whenever Dorinda

looked up from her plate.

"No, I don't hear anybody," the girl replied patiently. "Try to eat

something, or you'll be sick."

Mrs. Oakley obediently lifted a bit of egg on her fork, and then put it

down again before it had touched her lips. "I don't feel as if I could

swallow a morsel."

"Drink a little coffee anyway," Dorinda pleaded.

Again the old woman made a futile effort to swallow. "I don't know what

can be the matter with me," she said, "but my throat feels as if it were

paralyzed."

"Well, I'll fix up a snack for you, and you can nibble at it on the way.

Somebody will be sure to ask us to dinner. Now, I'll clear the table

before I get ready."

But, after all, Dorinda was left at home for the day. Just as Nimrod,

animated by misfortune, was leading Dan and Beersheba out to the wagon,

a buggy drove briskly into the yard, and Nathan Pedlar alighted.

"I kind of thought you'd want a man with your Ma, Dorinda," he

explained, "so I left Bob Shafer in charge of the store and came right

over. Rufus spoke to me as he was going by with the sheriff last night,

and I told him I'd take his Ma to the Courthouse."

Though Dorinda was doubtful at first, Mrs. Oakley responded immediately.

In spite of her protracted experience with masculine helplessness, she

had not lost her confidence in the male as a strong prop in the hour of

adversity. "I can't tell you how thankful I am to have you, Nathan," she

replied eagerly. "Dorinda had just as well stay at home and look after

the farm."

"Don't you think I'd better go too, Ma?" the girl asked, not without a

tinge of exasperation in her tone. It seemed absurd to her that her

mother should prefer to have Nathan Pedlar stand by her simply because

he happened to be a man.

"I don't believe she'll need you, Dorinda," remarked Nathan, who, like

Nimrod, was inspired by adversity. "But if you feel you'd like to come,

I reckon we can all three squeeze into my buggy."

"There ain't a bit of use in your going," Mrs. Oakley insisted. "You

just stay right here and take care of things."

"Well, I won't go." Dorinda gave way after a resistance that was only

half hearted. "Take care of her, Nathan, and make her eat something

before she gets there."'

Running into the house, she wrapped two buttered rolls and boiled eggs

in a red and white napkin, and put them into a little basket. Then she

added a bottle of blackberry wine, and carried the basket out to the

buggy, while Mrs. Oakley tied on her bonnet with trembling hands.

"Where's my bottle of camphor, Dorinda?"

"Here it is, Ma, in your reticule. Be sure and take a little blackberry

wine if you feel faint." Not until she had watched the buggy drive

through the gate and out on the road, where the sun was coming up in a

ball of fire, did the girl understand what a relief it was not to go. "I

believe she'd rather have Nathan," she decided, as she went upstairs to

change into her old gingham dress, "because he doesn't know that she is

not telling the truth."

When she thought of it afterwards, that day towered like a mountain in

the cloudy background of her life. Alone on the farm, for the first time

in her recollection, she felt forlorn and isolated. It was impossible

for her to keep her mind fixed on her tasks. Restlessness, like an

inarticulate longing, pricked at her nerves. When the morning work in

the dairy was over, she wandered about the farm, directing the work in

the fields, and stopping for a minute or two to talk with old Matthew

Fairlamb, who was handing up the shingles to his son William on the roof

of the new barn. At a little distance the old house of the overseer,

which had been used as a tobacco barn since her great-grandfather's

death, was being cleaned and repaired for Jonas Walsh (one of the "poor

Walshes") who had undertaken to work as a manager in return for a living

and a share of the crops. After Rufus went, Mrs. Oakley insisted, a

white man and his family would be required on the place, and though

Dorinda preferred loneliness to such company, she found it less wearing

to yield to her mother than to argue against her opinion. "Mrs. Walsh

will be company for Ma, anyway," she said to herself. "Even if she is

slatternly, they will still have chickens in common."

"Do you think Jonas will be useful?" she inquired of old Matthew, while

she paused to watch the expert shingling of the roof.

Old Matthew made a dubious gesture, "Mebbe he will, an' mebbe he won't.

I ain't prophesyin'."

"Well, he can shoot anyhow," William observed cynically, as he stooped

down for the shingles his father held up. "He's got a gun and a coon

dog."

"But I need him to work. How can you make a living out of the land

unless you work it?"

Old Matthew chuckled. "The trouble with this here land is that tobaccy

has worn it out. I ain't never seen the land yit that it wouldn't wear

out if you gave it a chance. You take my advice, Dorindy, and don't have

nothin' more to do with tobaccy. As long as you don't smoke and don't

chaw, thar ain't no call for you to put up with it."

"I won't," Dorinda replied with determination. "All the tobacco fields

are giving way to cowpeas."

"I see you're making a new field alongside of the old one."

"Yes. I sowed sweet clover with lime, and turned the clover under when

it was in bloom. I can't afford to do that again. It was an experiment,

but it improved the land."

"You're right thar, honey. Put yo' heart in the land. The land is the

only thing that will stay by you."

She smiled and passed on, stopping to say a few words to Mary Joe Green

at the door of the henhouse. Though she was aware that her aimless

movements accomplished nothing, she could not settle down to the steady

work which was awaiting her. The sound of a wagon in the road shook her

nerves into a quiver of fear, and she started whenever a bird flew

overhead or an acorn dropped on the dead leaves at her feet. At dinner

time she did not kindle a fire in the stove, but drank a glass of

buttermilk and ate a "pone" of cornbread while she stood on the front

porch and looked at the road. One moment she wished that she had gone

with her mother to the Courthouse, and the next she was glad that she

had waited at home. Whatever Rufus's fate might be, she felt that the

mental strain would be the end of her mother. Even if Rufus were to go

free, Mrs. Oakley's conscience would torment her to death.

As the day declined the place became insupportable to her, and leaving

the house, she walked across the yard to the gate, with Rambler and

Flossie trailing at her heels. The road under the honey locust tree was

strewn with oblong brown pods, as glossy as satin, and treading over

them, she walked slowly past the bridge and up the shaded slope between

the pasture and the band of Hoot Owl Woods. In the pasture she could see

the Jerseys gathered by the stream under the willows, and now and then a

silver tinkle of cowbells floated over the trumpet vine on the fence.

It was a rich October afternoon, with a sky of burnished blue and an air

of carnival in the wine-red and ashen-bronze of the woods. For an

instant the brightness hurt her eyes, and when she opened them it seemed

to her that the autumnal radiance fluttered like a blown shawl over the

changeless structure of the landscape. Beneath the fugitive beauty the

stern features of the country had not softened.

She walked on, still followed by Rambler and Flossie, beyond the woods

to the fork of the road. Looking away from the gate of Five Oaks, she

kept her eyes on the acres of broomsedge belonging to Honeycomb Farm.

The stretch of road beyond the burned cabin was deserted, and the only

sound was the monotonous droning of insects and the dropping of

persimmons or acorns on the dead leaves under the trees. Far away, in

the direction of Old Farm, the shocked corn on the hill was swimming in

a rain of apricot-coloured lights. "If only it would last," she thought,

"things would not be so hard to bear. But it is like happiness. Before

you know that you have found it, it goes."

Turning away, because beauty was like a knife in her heart, she called

Rambler back to her side. In the middle of the road, bathed in the

apricot-coloured glow, Flossie was sitting, and farther on, she saw the

figures of old Matthew and William Fairlamb on their way home from work.

When they reached her they spoke without stopping.

"Good evening. We'll be over bright and early to-morrow."

"Good evening to you both. There won't be a killing frost to-night, will

there?"

"Not enough to hurt. Thar ain't nothin' but flowers left out by this

time, I reckon."

Old Matthew's cheeks were as red as winter apples, and his eyes twinkled

like black haws in their sockets. "He! He! When thar ain't nothin' to

hurt, we've no need to worry!"

As they trudged away, she turned and looked after them. She wanted to

ask what they had heard of the shooting; but she resisted the impulse

until they were too far away for her words to reach them. Standing

there, while the two figures dwindled gradually into the blue distance,

she was visited again by the feeling that the moment was significant, if

only she could discover the meaning of it before it eluded her. Strange

how often that sensation returned to her now! Everything at which she

gazed; the frosted brown and yellow and wine-red of the landscape; the

shocked corn against the sunset; the figures of the two men diminishing

in the vague smear of the road; all these images were steeped in an

illusion of mystery. "I've let myself get wrought up over nothing," she

thought, with an endeavour to be reasonable.

By the time she came within sight of the house again the afterglow was

paling, and a chill had crept through the thick shawl that she wore.

Perhaps, in spite of old Matthew, there would be a heavy frost before

morning, and she was glad to reflect that only the few summer flowers in

her mother's rockery would be blighted. Smoke was rising from two of the

chimneys, and she knew that Mary Joe had kindled fires in the kitchen

and in her mother's chamber. Already Fluvanna would be well on with the

milking. It was the first time Dorinda had trusted it to the girl and

Nimrod, and she hoped that there would be nothing to find fault with

when she went out to the barn.

Two hours later, when the milking and the straining were both over, she

hurried out of the dairy at the noise of wheels in the darkness. As the

buggy drew up to the steps, she saw that her mother was seated between

Rufus and Nathan; and even before she caught the words they shouted, she

understood that the boy had been discharged. It was what she had

expected; yet after the assurance reached her, her anxiety was still as

heavy as it had been all day. When her eyes fell on her mother's

shrunken figure she realized that the old woman must have paid a fearful

price for her son's freedom. "She looks bled," the girl thought

bitterly. "She looks as if she would crumble to a handful of dust if you

touched her." A hot anger against Rufus flamed in her heart. Then she

saw that the boy was shaking with emotion, and her anger was smothered

in pity. After all, who was to blame? Who was ever to blame in life?

"It's all right, Dorinda," Nathan said, as he helped Mrs. Oakley to the

ground and up on the porch. "Your Ma held up splendidly, but it's been

too much for her. She's worn clean out, I reckon."

"I wish you'd been there to see the way she did it," Rufus added.

"Nobody said a word after she got through." Had he actually forgotten,

Dorinda asked herself, that his mother had sworn to a lie in order to

save him?

XIII

For the second time in her life Mrs. Oakley allowed herself to be put to

bed without protest. She hung limp and cold when they placed her in a

chair, and watched her children with vacant eyes while Rufus piled fresh

logs on the fire and Dorinda brought bottles of hot water wrapped in her

orange shawl. When the grey flannelette nightgown was slipped over her

shoulders, the old woman spoke for the first time since she had entered

the house.

"Dorinda, the Lord gave me strength."

"They have killed her," the girl thought resentfully; but she said only,

"Now you must get to bed as quick as you can."

Mrs. Oakley stared up at her with eyes that were wind-swept in their

bleakness. Her face looked flattened and drawn to one side, as if some

tremendous pressure had just been removed. "I reckon I'd better," she

answered listlessly.

"You must try to eat something. Fluvanna is making you some tea and

toast."

"I ain't sick enough for tea."

"Then I'll make you a cream toddy. There's some nice cream I saved for

you."

While Dorinda was speaking she leaned over the bed and wrapped the

clammy feet in the orange shawl. "Can you feel the hot water bottles?"

she asked. The feet that she warmed so carefully were as stiff already,

she told herself in terror, as if they belonged to a corpse. Neither

the hot water nor the blazing fire could put any warmth into the

shivering body.

"Yes, I feel them, but I'm sort of numbed."

"Now I'll make the toddy. I've got some whiskey put away where Rufus

couldn't find it. If Fluvanna brings your supper, try to eat the egg

anyway."

"I'll try, but I feel as if I couldn't keep it down," Mrs. Oakley

replied submissively.

Flames were leaping up the chimney, and the shadows had melted into the

cheerful light. When Dorinda returned with the cream toddy, Mrs. Oakley

drank it eagerly, and with the stimulant of the whiskey in her veins,

she was able to sit up in bed and eat the supper Fluvanna had prepared.

It was long after the coloured girl's hour for going home, but the

excitement had braced her to self-sacrifice, and she had offered to stay

on for the night. "I can make up a pallet jest as easy as not in yo'

Ma's room," she said to Dorinda, "an' I'll fix Mr. Rufus' breakfast for

him, so he can catch the train befo' day."

There were few negroes who did' not develop character, either good or

bad, in a crisis, Dorinda reflected a little later as she went out to

the dairy. Though there was no need for her to visit the dairy, since

Fluvanna and Nimrod had finished the work, she felt that she could not

sleep soundly until she had inspected the milk. Was this merely what

Rufus called "woman's fussiness," she wondered, or was it the kind of

nervous mania that afflicted even the most successful farmer?

The brilliant autumn day had declined into a wan evening. From the dark

fields the wind brought the trail of woodsmoke mingled with the

effluvium of rotting leaves; and this scent invaded her thoughts like

the odour of melancholy. Not even the frosty air or the fragrant breath

of the cows in the barn could dispel the lethargy which had crept over

her. "I'm tired out," she reasoned. "I've been going too hard the last

six months, and I feel the strain as soon as I stop." Though she was

saddened by the haunting pathos of life, she did not feel the intimate

pang of grief. All that, it seemed to her, was over for ever. The power

to pity was still hers, for compassion is a detached impulse, but she

had lot beyond recall the gift of poignant emotion. Nothing had

penetrated that dead region around her heart. Not her father's death,

not her mother's illness--nothing. Drought had withered her, she told

herself cynically, and the locust had eaten away the green of her

spirit.

In the morning, Rufus went off on the early train, and Dorinda drew a

breath of relief as she turned back to her work. The shock of the

tragedy appeared to have cleared the boy's temper, and he showed genuine

distress when he parted from his mother. "I feel as if I'd never see her

again," he said to Dorinda on the porch, while he was waiting for the

farmer who had promised to stop for him on the way to the station.

Dorinda shook her head. Helplessness in the face of misery acted always

as an irritant on her nerves. "You never can tell," she replied. "But

remember all you have cost her and try to keep straight in the future."

"I swear I'll never give her another minute's worry," he responded,

stuffing his handkerchief into his pocket.

Perhaps he meant it; but it seemed to Dorinda that his repentance, like

his gift with tools, was too facile. "Whatever comes of this, it has

been the death of Ma," she thought, as she went into the house.

When the day's churning was over, and she was in her mother's room, the

new doctor from the Courthouse arrived with his instruments and his

medicine case. He was a brisk, very ugly young man, with an awkward

raw-boned figure, and an honest face which was covered with unsightly

freckles. As different from Jason as any man could well be! He had risen

by sheer ability from the poorer class, and already, notwithstanding his

plain appearance and uncompromising honesty, he had built up a better

practice than the hereditary one of the Greylocks. For one thing, he

insisted upon having his fees paid, and it was natural, Dorinda had

discovered, to value advice more highly when it was not given away.

As the doctor sat down beside Mrs. Oakley's bed, she opened her eyes and

looked at him without surprise and without welcome. Her bed was smooth

and spotlessly clean; the best quilt of log-cabin design lay over her

feet; and she was wearing a new nightgown which was buttoned closely

about her neck. Without her clothes, she had the look, in spite of her

ravaged face, of a very old child.

"I've never spent a day in bed in my life, doctor," she said, "except

when my children were born."

"I know," he rejoined, with dry sympathy. "That is the trouble."

He did not waste words, but bent over immediately to begin his

examination; and when it was over, he merely patted the old woman's

shoulder before packing away his instruments.

"You'll have to stay in bed a while now," he said, as he stood up with

his case in his hands. "I'll leave some medicine with your daughter; but

it isn't medicine you need; it is rest."

Her groping gaze followed him with irrepressible weariness. "I don't

know what will become of the chickens," she said. "I reckon everything

will go to rack and ruin, but I can't help it. I've done all I could."

He turned on the threshold. "My dear Mrs. Oakley, you couldn't get up if

you tried. Your strength has given out."

She smiled indifferently. All the nervous energy upon which she had

lived for forty years was exhausted. There was nothing now but the

machine which was rapidly running down. "Yes, I reckon I'm worn out,"

she responded, and turned her face to the wall.

Not until they had left the porch and crossed the trodden ragweed to

where the buggy was waiting, did Dorinda summon the courage to ask a

question.

"Is she seriously ill, doctor?"

At her words he stopped and looked straight into her eyes, a look as

bare and keen as a blade. "She isn't ill at all in the strict sense of

the word," he answered. "She told the truth when she said that she was

worn out."

"Then she will never be up again?"

"One never knows. But I think this is the beginning of the end." He

hesitated, and added regretfully, "I ought not to put it so bluntly."

She shook her head. "I'd rather know. Poor Ma! She is only sixty-two. It

has come so suddenly."

"Suddenly." The word broke from him like an oath. "Why, the woman in

there has been dying for twenty years!"

Her eyes were stony while she watched him mount into his buggy and turn

the horse's head toward the gate. The wheels spun over the rocks and out

into the road, as if they were revolving over the ice in her heart.

Would nothing thaw the frozen lake that enveloped her being? Would she

never again become living and human? The old sense of the hollowness of

reality had revived. Though she knew it was her mother of whom they had

been speaking, the words awoke only echoes in her thoughts. She longed

with all her soul to suffer acutely; yet she could feel nothing within

this colourless void in which she was imprisoned.

When the buggy had disappeared, she retraced her steps to the house and

entered her mother's room with a smile on her lips.

"You'll have to rest now, Ma, no matter how you hate it."

At Dorinda's cheerful voice, the old woman turned over and looked at her

daughter as if she were a stranger.

"I don't know how you'll manage," she answered; but her tone was

perfunctory.

"Oh, we'll manage all right. Don't you worry. Just try to get well, Ma."

A change of expression rippled like a shadow over the grey features, and

passed without leaving a trace. "I was afraid maybe the doctor didn't

think I was sick enough to stay in bed. I know I ain't exactly sick, but

I seem to have given way. I reckon Mary Joe can look after the chickens

till I'm able to be up."

After this she fell into a doze from which she did not awaken until

Dorinda brought her favourite dinner of jowl and turnip salad.

"The doctor says you must eat, Ma, or you'll never get back your

strength."

"I know I ought to, daughter, but I feel as if something was choking

me."

Day after day, month after month. Nothing else all through the autumn

and winter.

Though Mrs. Oakley lived more than a year longer, she was never able

again to leave her bed. For the greater part of the time she lay, silent

and inert, in a state between waking and sleeping, unconcerned after all

her fruitless endeavours. Rufus, she never asked for, and when his

letters were read to her, she would smile vaguely and turn away as if

she had ceased to be interested. Old Rambler spent his days on a mat at

the side of her bed, and Flossie lay curled up on the patchwork quilt

over her feet. If they were absent long, she would begin to move

restlessly, and beg presently that they should be brought back. At the

end, they were the only companions that she desired, for, as she said

once, they "did not bother her with questions." The tragedy to Dorinda

was not so much in her mother's slow dying as in her unconditional

surrender to decay. For more than forty years she had fought her

dauntless fight against the sordid actuality, and at the last she

appeared to become completely reconciled to her twin enemies, poverty

and dirt. Nothing made any difference to her now, and because nothing

made any difference to her, dying was the happiest part of her life.

"There ain't any use struggling," she said once, while Dorinda was

cleaning her room, and after a long pause, "It doesn't seem just right

that we have to be born. It ain't worth all the trouble we go through."

But there were other days when her inextinguishable energy would flare

up in sparks, and she would insist upon sitting up in bed while the

white Leghorns flocked by the window. Then she would recognize her

favourite hens and call them by name; and once she had Romeo, the prize

rooster, brought into her room, and kept him under her eyes, until he

began to strut and behave indelicately, when she "shooed" him out in her

old peremptory manner. Frequently, in the last few months, she asked to

have Dan and Beersheba led to her window. Tears would come into her eyes

while the long sad faces of the horses looked at her through the panes,

and she would murmur plaintively, "There's a heap of understanding in

animals. You'll never let those horses want, will you, daughter?"

"Never, Ma. In a few years, if nothing happens, I'll turn them out to

pasture for the rest of their lives."

Mrs. Oakley would smile as if she had forgotten, and after a long

silence, she would begin talking in an animated voice of her girlhood

and her parents. As the weeks went by, all the years of her marriage and

motherhood vanished from her memory, and her mind returned to her early

youth when she was engaged to the young missionary. Her old tropical

dream came back to her; in her sleep she would ramble on about palm

trees and crocodiles and ebony babies. "I declare, it seems just as if

I'd been there," she said one morning. "It's queer how much more real

dreams can be than the things you're going through."

At the end of the year, in the middle of the night before she died, she

awoke Dorinda, and talked for a long time about the heathen and the

sacrifices that Presbyterian missionaries had made to bring them to

Christ. "Your great-grandfather was a wonderful scholar," she said, "and

I reckon that's where you get most of your sense. I s'pose missionaries

have to be scholars. They need something besides religion to fall back

on in their old age." Never once did she allude to anything that had

occurred since her marriage, and she appeared to have forgotten that she

had ever known Joshua.

The next afternoon she died in her sleep while Nathan was sitting beside

her bed. For a few minutes Dorinda broke down and wept, less from grief

than from the knowledge that grief was expected of her; and Nathan, who

was always at his best in the house of mourning, won her everlasting

gratitude by his behaviour. She found herself depending upon him as if

he had been some ideal elder brother such as she had never known. So

naturally that fate seemed to have arranged it on purpose, he assumed

authority over the household and the funeral. He thought of everything,

and everybody deferred to him. Funerals were the only occasions when he

had ever risen to dignity, and though he had sincerely liked Mrs.

Oakley, the few days before her burial were among the pleasantest that

he had ever spent in his life.

"I shall never forget how good you have been," Dorinda said, when it was

over. "I don't know what I should have done without you." And though the

words were spoken impulsively, as a matter of fact she never, in the

future, forgot Nathan's kindness. It was a mark of her proud and

self-sufficient nature that she could not forget either gratitude or

resentment.

When he had driven away, she turned to Fluvanna, who was picking up bits

of rusty crape from the floor of the porch.

"I really don't know what we should have done without him," she remarked

over again.

"If you ax me, Miss Dorinda, he is one handy man at a funeral," answered

Fluvanna, who relapsed into dialect on tragic or perilous occasions. "I

was thinkin' right along how pleased yo' Ma would have been if she could

have seen him, for she cert'n'y did like handy folks about her."

"Poor Ma, I wish she could have had the chickens a few years earlier,"

Dorinda sighed. "To think of the years she went without a cow."

"Well, she enjoyed 'em while she had 'em," Fluvanna responded fervently.

"Have you thought yet what you're goin' to do, Miss Dorinda?"

"Yes, I've thought. The farm is mine. Ma left it to me, and I'm going to

stay on as we are."

"Just you and me? Won't you get lonesome without some white folks?"

"After Jonas Walsh moves out of the overseer's house, I'll engage Martin

Flower, who is a better farmer, and has a sensible wife. Mary Joe can

take care of the chickens, and I'm going to hire her brother Ebenezer to

help Nimrod with the cows. If everything goes well this winter, I'll be

ready to start a real dairy in the spring. Then I'll need more hands, so

we shan't be lonely."

"Naw'm, I don't reckon we'll, get lonesome, not the way we work,"

Fluvanna agreed. "I ain' never seen no man work as hard as you do, Miss

Dorinda. Yo' Ma told me befo' she passed away that you had stayin' power

and she reckoned that you was the only one of the family that had.

Sprightliness don't git you far, she said, unless you've got stayin'

power enough to keep you after you git thar. Well, it's all your'n now,

ain't it?" she inquired placidly, as Dorinda's eyes swept the horizon.

"Yes, it's all mine." Walking over to the edge of the porch, Dorinda

looked across the vague, glimmering fields. Another autumn had gone.

Another sunset like the heart of a pomegranate was fading out in the

west. Again the wandering scents of wood smoke and rotting leaves came

and went on the wind.

For an instant, the permanence of material things, the inexorable

triumph of fact over emotion, appeared to be the only reality. These

things had been ageless when her mother was young; they would be still

ageless when she herself had become an old woman. Over the immutable

landscape human lives drifted and vanished like shadows.

XIV

When she looked back on the years that followed her mother's death,

Dorinda could remember nothing but work. Out of a fog of recollection

there protruded bare outlines which she recognized as the milestones of

her prosperity. She saw clearly the autumn she had turned the

eighteen-acre field into pasture; the failure of her first experiment

with ensilage; the building of the new dairy and cow-barns; the gradual

increase of her seven cows into a herd. Certain dates stood out in her

farm calendar. The year the blight had fallen on her cornfield and she

had had to buy fodder from James Ellgood; the year she had first planted

alfalfa; the year she had lost a number of her cows from contagious

abortion; the year she had reclaimed the fields beyond Poplar Spring;

the year her first prize bull had won three blue ribbons. With the slow

return of fertility to the soil, she had passed, by an unconscious

process, into mute acquiescence with the inevitable. The bitter irony of

her point of view had shaded into a cheerful cynicism which formed a

protective covering over her mind and heart. She had worked relentlessly

through the years; but it was work that she had enjoyed, and above all

it was work that had created anew the surroundings amid which she lived.

In a changed form her mother's frustrated passion to redeem the world

was finding concrete expression.

At thirty-three, the perspective of the last ten years was incredibly

shortened. All the cold starry mornings when she had awakened before day

and crept out to the barn by lantern light to attend to the milking,

appeared to her now as a solitary frozen dawn. All the bleak winters,

all the scorching summers, were a single day; all the evenings, when she

had dreamed half asleep in the firelit dusk, were a single night. She

could not separate these years into seasons. In her long retrospect they

were crystallized into one flawless pattern.

Through those ten years, while she struggled to free the farm from debt,

she had scrimped and saved like a miser; and this habit of saving, she

knew, would cling to her for the rest of her life. She went without

butter; she drank only buttermilk, in order that she might keep nothing

back from the market. Her clothes were patched and mended as long as

they held together, and she had stopped going to church because her

pride would not suffer her to appear there in overalls, or in the faded

calico dresses she wore in the house. Though she was obliged to hire

women to help her with the milking and in the dairy, she herself worked

harder than any of them. Nothing, she told herself grimly, could elude

her vigilance. In her passionate recoil from the thriftlessness of the

poor, she had developed a nervous dread of indolence which reminded her

of her mother. She went to bed, stupefied by fatigue, as soon as the

last pound of butter was wrapped for the early train; yet she was up

again before the break of day while the hands were still sleeping. And

only Fluvanna, who lived in the house with her now, knew the hours she

spent beside her lamp counting the pounds of butter and the number of

eggs she had sent to market. If only she could save enough to pay off

the mortgage and return the money she had borrowed from the Faradays,

she felt that she should begin to breathe freely for the first time in

her life.

And there was more than hard work in her struggle; there was unflagging

enterprise as well. Her father had worked harder than she could ever do,

toiling summer and winter, day and night, over the crops, which always

failed because they were expected to thrive on so little. She remembered

him perpetually hauling manure or shredding fodder, until he loomed in

her memory as a titanic image of the labourer who labours without hope.

"The truth is, I would rather have failed at the start than have gone on

like that," she thought. "I was able to take risks because I was too

unhappy to be afraid." Yes, she had had the courage of desperation, and

that had saved her from failure. Without borrowed money, without the

courage to borrow money, she could never have made the farm even a

moderate success. This had required not only perseverance but audacity

as well; and it had required audacity again to permeate the methodical

science of farming with the spirit of adventure. Interest, excitement

even, must be instilled into the heartless routine. The hours of work

never varied. Chores were done by necessity, as in the old days without

system, but by the stroke of the clock. Each milker had her own place,

and milked always the same cows. After the first trial or two, Dorinda

had yielded to the reluctance of the cow when her accustomed milker was

changed. She had borrowed money again, "hiring money" they called it at

Pedlar's Mill, to buy her first Jersey bull; but the daughters of that

bull were still her best butter-making cows.

Gradually, as the years passed, her human associations narrowed down to

Fluvanna's companionship and the Sunday afternoon visits of Nathan

Pedlar and his children. The best years of her youth, while her beauty

resisted hard work and sun and wind, were shared only with the coloured

woman with whom she lived. She had prophesied long ago that Fluvanna

would be a comfort to her, and the prophecy was completely fulfilled.

The affection between the two women had outgrown the slender tie of

mistress and maid, and had become as strong and elastic as the bond that

holds relatives together. They knew each other's daily lives; they

shared the one absorbing interest in the farm; they trusted each other

without discretion and without reserve. Fluvanna respected and adored

her mistress; and Dorinda, with an inherited feeling of condescension,

was sincerely attached to her servant. Though Dorinda still guarded the

reason of her flight to New York, she did this less from dread of

Fluvanna's suspecting the truth than from secret terror of the

enervating thought of the past. That was over and done with, and every

instinct of her nature warned her to let dead bones lie buried.

Sometimes on winter nights, when the snow was falling or the rain

blowing in gusts beyond the window, the two women would sit for an hour,

when work was over, in front of the log fire in Dorinda's room which had

once been her mother's chamber. Then they would talk sympathetically of

the cows and the hens, and occasionally they would speak of Fluvanna's

love affairs and of Dorinda's years in the city. The coloured girl would

ask eager questions in the improved grammar her mistress had taught her.

"I don't see how you could bear to come back to this poky place. But, of

course, when yo' Pap died somebody had to be here to look after things.

I don't reckon you'll ever go back, will you?"

"No, I shall never go back. I had enough of it when I was there."

"Wouldn't you rather look at the sights up there than at cows and

chickens?"

Dorinda would shake her head thoughtfully. "Not if they are my cows and

chickens."

In this reply, which was as invariable as a formula, she touched

unerringly the keynote of her character. The farm belonged to her, and

the knowledge aroused a fierce sense of possession. To protect, to lift

up, rebuild and restore, these impulses formed the deepest obligation

her nature could feel.

Though she talked frankly to Nathan about the farm and the debts which

had once encumbered it, she had never given him her confidence as

generously as she had bestowed it on Fluvanna. Kind as he had been, the

fact that he was a man and a widower made an impalpable, and she told

herself ridiculous, barrier between them. She had grown to depend upon

him, but it was a practical dependence, as devoid of sentiment as her

dependence upon the clock or the calendar. If he had dropped out of her

life, she would have missed him about the barn and the stable; and it

would have been difficult, she admitted, to manage the farm without his

advice. There were the children, too, particularly the younger boy, who

had been born with a clubfoot. The one human emotion left in Dorinda's

heart, she sometimes thought, was her affection for Rose Emily's boy,

John Abner.

If he had been her own son he could not have been closer to her; and his

infirmity awakened the ardent compassion that love assumed in her strong

and rather arrogant nature. Though he was barely fourteen, he was more

congenial with her than any grown person at Pedlar's Mill. He devoured

books as she used to do when she was a girl, and he was already

developing into a capable farmer. Years ago she had given Nathan no

peace until he had taken the child to town and had had an operation

performed on his crippled foot; and when no improvement had resulted,

she had insisted that he should have John Abner's shoes made from

measurements. As a little girl, her mother had always said to her that

she preferred lame ducks to well ones; and John Abner was the only lame

duck that had ever come naturally into her life. Fortunately, he was a

boy of deep, though reserved, affections, and he returned in his

reticent way the tenderness Dorinda lavished upon him. Minnie May, who

had grown into a plain girl of much character, had been jealous at

first; but a little later, when she became engaged to be married, she

was prudently reconciled to the difference Dorinda made in her life. The

two other children, though they were both healthy and handsome, with a

dash of Rose Emily's fire and spirit, were received as lightly and

forgotten as quickly as warm days in winter or cool ones in summer. The

girl Lena, who had just turned seventeen, was a pretty, vain, and

flirtatious creature, with a head "as thick with beaux," Fluvanna

observed, "as a brier patch with briers"; and the boy, Bertie,

familiarly called "Bud," was earning a good salary in a wholesale

grocery store in the city. It was pleasant to have Nathan and the

children come over every week; but John Abner was the only one Dorinda

missed when accident or bad weather kept them away. In the beginning

they had visited her in the afternoons, and she had had nothing better

to offer them than popcorn or roasted apples and chestnuts; but as the

years passed and debts were paid, there was less need of rigid economy,

and she had drifted into the habit of having the family with her at

Sunday dinner. This had gradually become the one abundant meal of the

week, and she and Fluvanna both looked forward to it with the keen

anticipation of deferred appetite.

The work was so exacting and her nerves so blessedly benumbed by toil,

that Dorinda seldom stopped to ask herself if she were satisfied with

her lot. Had the question been put to her, she would probably have

dismissed it with the retort that she "had no time to worry about things

like that." On the surface her days were crowded with more or less

interesting tasks; but in her buried life there were hours when the old

discontent awoke with the autumn wind in the broomsedge. At such moments

she would feel that life had cheated her, and she would long

passionately for something bright and beautiful that she had missed. Not

love again! No, never again the love that she had known! What she longed

for was the something different, the something indestructibly desirable

and satisfying. Then there would return the blind sense of a purpose in

existence which had evaded her search. The encompassing dullness would

melt like a cloud, and she would grasp a meaning beneath the deceptions

and the cruelties of the past. But this feeling was as fugitive as all

others, and when it vanished it left not the glorified horizon, but

simply the long day's work to be done.

Years had passed now, and she had stopped thinking of Jason. Since she

never left the farm, she was spared the accident of a meeting, and she

had excluded him for so long from her consciousness that his memory had

appeared to acquiesce in the banishment. For the first two or three

years after her return, she had lived in dread of seeing him again in

the flesh, or of having his image awake to life in her mind. She had

been afraid to go to sleep, because in her dreams she was still

defenseless against him; and after her love for him had died, her fear

had remained embedded in hatred. But that had passed also, and she had

ceased to remember him, except when Nathan or one of the labourers on

the farm mentioned his name.

"Doctor Stout is taking all Jason's practice," Nathan said one day.

"That comes, I reckon, of trying to please everybody."

"I thought drink was his ruin," Dorinda rejoined indifferently.

"Of course drink helped it along, though it began farther back with his

being so pleasant that you couldn't believe what he said. At first folks

liked it, but after a while they began to see through it. By the way,

his wife has been acting kind of queer. They say she's got a screw loose

somewhere in her brain."

"I know," was all that Dorinda answered, but she thought, "And I once

wished I could be in her place!"

She remembered the way Geneva had slipped up behind her one afternoon in

an old field where broomsedge was burning, and had talked in a rambling,

excited manner about her marriage and how blissfully happy they both

were. "Not that we shouldn't like a child," she had continued, with a

grimace which had begun as a smile, "but we can't expect to have

everything, and we are blissfully happy. Blissfully happy!" she had

screamed out suddenly in her high, cracked voice. At the time Dorinda

had been puzzled, but now she understood and was sorry. The staring

face, with its greenish skin and too prominent eyes, framed in the

beautiful flaxen hair, softened her heart. "At least Geneva was not to

blame, yet she is the one who is punished most," she thought; and this

seemed to her another proof of the remorseless injustice of destiny. "I

suppose the Lord knew what was best for me," she said to herself in the

pious idiom her mother had used; but, as the phrase soared in her mind,

it was as empty as a balloon. When she remembered her girlhood now, she

would think contemptuously, "How could I ever have had so little sense?"

Were all girls as foolish, she wondered, or was she exceptional in her

romantic ignorance of life?

Without warning, after not thinking of Jason for years, she dreamed of

him one night. She dreamed of him, not as she knew that he was to-day,

but as she had once believed him to be. For a moment, through the

irresistible force of illusion, she was caught again, she was imprisoned

in the agony of that old passion. In her dream she saw herself fleeing

from some invisible pursuer through illimitable deserts of broomsedge.

Though she dared not look back, she could hear the rush of footsteps

behind her; she could almost feel the breath of the hunter on her neck.

For minutes that were an eternity the flight endured. Then as she

dropped to her knees, with her strength exhausted, she was caught up in

the arms of the pursuer, and looking up, felt Jason's lips pressed to

hers.

There was thunder in her ears when she awoke. Springing out of bed, she

ran in her nightgown to the window and threw the shutters wide open.

Outside, beneath a dappled sky, she saw the frosted November fields and

the dark trees flung off sharply, like flying buttresses, between the

hill and the horizon. The wind cut through her gown; far away in the

moonlight an owl hooted. Gradually, while she stood shivering in the

frosty air, the terror of her dream faded and ice froze again over her

heart.

Through ten years of hard work and self-denial the firm, clear surface

of her beauty remained unroughened. Then one October morning, Fluvanna,

looking at her in the sunlight, exclaimed, "Miss Dorindy, you're too

young to have crow's feet!"

Crow's feet! She turned with a start from the brood of white turkeys she

was counting. Yes, she was too young, she was only thirty-three, but she

was already beginning to break. Youth was going! Youth was going, the

words echoed and reechoed through the emptiness of the future. Week by

week, month by month, year by year, youth was slipping away; and she had

never known the completeness, the fulfilment, that she had expected of

life. Even now, she could not tell herself, she did not know, what it

was that she had missed. It was not love, nor was it motherhood. No, the

need went deeper than nature. It lay so deep, so far down in her hidden

life, that the roots of it were lost in the rich darkness. Though she

felt these things vaguely, without thinking that she felt them, it

seemed to her, standing there with her gaze on the brood of white

turkeys, that all she had ever hoped for or believed in was eluding her

grasp. In a little while, with happiness still undiscovered, she would

be as wrinkled and grey as her mother. Only her mother's restless habit

of work would remain to fill the vacancy of her days.

"I've been working too hard, Fluvanna," she said, "and what do I get out

of it?"

"You oughtn't to let yo'self go, Miss Dorindy. There ain't any use in

the world for you to slave and stint the way you do. You ought to go

about mo' and begin to take notice."

Dorinda laughed. "You talk as if I were a widower."

"Naw'm, I ain't. No widower ever lived the way you do."

"It's true. I haven't bought a good dress or been anywhere for ten

years."

"Thar ain't a particle of use in it. You'll be old and dried up soon

enough. What's the use of being young and proud if you don't strut?"

Yes, Fluvanna was right. What was the use? She had made a success of her

undertaking; but it was inadequate because there were no spectators of

her triumph. She had kept so close to the farm that her neighbours knew

her only as a dim figure against the horizon, a moving shape among

corn shocks and hay ricks in the flat landscape, an image that vanished

with these inanimate objects in the lengthening perspective. Even in the

thin and isolated community in which she lived, she did not stand out,

clearly projected, like James Ellgood; perhaps, for the simple reason,

she told herself now, that she had drilled her energy down into the soil

instead of training it upward.

"I believe you're right, Fluvanna," she said. "Now that we're out of

debt and things are going fairly well, I ought to try to get something

out of life while I'm still young."

After the turkeys were counted, she left Fluvanna to turn them out into

the woods, and going into her bedroom, looked at herself in the mirror

which had once belonged to her mother. While she stared into the glass

it seemed to her that another face was watching her beyond her

reflection, a face that was drawn and pallid, with a corded neck and the

famished eyes of a disappointed dreamer. Well, she would never become

like that if she could prevent it. She would never let disappointment

eat away the heart in her bosom.

She was still handsome. The grave oval of her face, the fine austerity

of its modelling, would remain noble even after she became an old woman

and the warm colour of the flesh was mottled and stained with yellow. It

was true that lines were forming about her eyes; but the eyes themselves

were as deeply blue as the autumn sky, and though her skin had coarsened

in the last ten years, the dark red of her cheeks and lips was as vivid

as ever. Her black hair was still abundant, though it had lost its gloss

in the sunshine. In spite of hard work, or because of it, her tall,

straight figure had kept the slender hips and the pointed breasts of a

goddess. She did not look young for her age; the sunny bloom, like the

down on a peach, had hardened to the glaze of maturity; but she had not

lost the April charm of her expression. "For all I've ever had, I might

as well have been born plain," she thought.

XV

That afternoon she harnessed Molly, the new mare, to the buggy, and

accompanied by Ranger, son of Rambler, drove over to Honeycomb Farm.

"I want a dress to wear to church," she said to Miss Seena, "something

good that will last."

"Then you're going to church again? I must say it is time." Rawboned,

wintry, rheumatic, the dressmaker was still an authority.

"The roads were so bad." To her surprise, Dorinda found herself becoming

apologetic. "I couldn't take the teams out on Sundays, but I've bought a

chestnut mare for my own use, and I'll begin going again."

"Well, I'm glad you ain't a confirmed backslider. What sort of material

had you thought of?"

Dorinda reflected. "Something handsome. Silk--no, satin. That shines

more."

"Why don't you order it out of a catalogue? My fingers have got so stiff

I've had to give up sewin' the last few months. They put everything in

catalogues now." Miss Seena selected one from the pile on the table and

opened it as she spoke. "You'll want blue, I reckon. You were always

partial to blue."

Dorinda frowned. "No, not blue. Any colour but blue."

"I thought you favoured it. Do you recollect the dress I bought to match

yo' eyes one spring when you were a girl? My, but you did look well in

it!"

"Isn't there any other colour worn?"

"Well, there's brown. The fashion books speak highly of brown this year.

Black's real stylish too. With yo' bright complexion black ought to go

mighty well. You'd better order this model. It is the newest style." She

pointed to a picture which seemed to Dorinda to be the extreme of

fashion. "Them box pleats and pointed basques is the latest thing. I

reckon you'll have to get a new corset," she concluded sharply, looking

the girl up and down. "These styles don't set well unless they're worn

over a straight font."

"Then I'll get one." Dorinda was prepared for any discomfort. "And I

need a coat--and a hat, a big one with a feather."

"You want a willow plume. They're all the rage this season, and a long

coat of seal plush. There're some handsome ones in the front of that

catalogue. Seal plush is goin' to be mo' worn than fur, all the fashion

books say."

After the choice was made and the letter written by the cramped fingers

of the dressmaker, Dorinda drove home consoled by the discovery that

crow's feet make, after all, less difference than clothes in one's

happiness, Strange how a little thing like a new dress could lift up

one's spirits! Her changed mood persisted until she approached the fork

of the road and saw a woman's figure against the dying flare of the sun.

As she reached the spot, the woman came down into the middle of the

road, and she recognized Geneva Greylock.

"I want to talk to you, Dorinda," Geneva began, with a trill of

laughter. "Won't you stop and listen?"

She was wearing a thin summer dress, though the air was sharp, and round

her waist she had tied a faded blue sash with streamers which blew out

in the wind. Her face, in its masklike immobility, resembled the face of

a dead woman. Only her gleaming flaxen hair was alive.

"I'm afraid it's too late," Dorinda replied as pleasantly as she could.

"Supper will be waiting, and besides you ought not to be out in that

dress. You will catch your death of cold."

Geneva shook her head, while that expressionless laughter trickled in a

stream from her lips. "I'm not cold," she answered. "I'm so happy that I

must talk to somebody. It is our wedding anniversary, and I'm obliged to

tell somebody how blissfully happy we are. Jason went to sleep right

after dinner, and he hasn't waked up yet, so I had to come out and find

somebody to talk to. I've got a secret that nobody knows, not even

Jason."

So it was the same thing over again! Her eyes looked as if they would

leap out of her head, they were so staring and famished. "I'll tell you

what I'll do," Dorinda responded, her voice softened by pity. "If you'll

get into the buggy, I'll drive you down to Gooseneck Creek. That will be

halfway home." This was what marriage to Jason had brought, and yet

there had been a time when she would have given her life to have been

married to him for a single year.

"Oh, will you?" Geneva sprang up on the step and into the buggy. She was

so thin that her bones seemed to rattle as she moved, and there were

hollows in her chest and between her shoulder blades. "Then I can tell

you my secret."

"I wouldn't if I were you. I've got to keep an eye on the road, so I

can't talk."

For a few minutes Geneva rambled on in her strained voice as if she had

not heard her. Then pausing, she asked abruptly, "Why did you never like

me, Dorinda? I always wanted to be friends with you."

"I like you. I do like you."

Geneva shook her head. "You never liked me because you loved Jason.

Jason jilted you." She broke into her cracked laugh again. "You don't

know, but there are worse things than being jilted."

Anger flamed up in Dorinda's heart, but it died down before she allowed

herself to reply. "I suppose there are," she said at last. "That was

long ago, anyhow. So long that it doesn't matter what happened." Poor

demented creature, she thought, how many months would it be before they

put her away?

Suddenly Geneva leaned toward her and began to whisper so rapidly that

Dorinda could scarcely follow her words. "If I tell you my secret, will

you promise never to repeat it? When you hear it, you will know there

are worse things than being jilted. I had a baby, and Jason killed it.

He killed it as soon as it was born and buried it in the garden. He

doesn't know that I saw him. He thinks that I was asleep, but I found

the grave under the lilac bushes at the end of the garden path. Now, we

are going to have another baby, and I'm afraid he will kill this one

too. That's why I pretend to be so blissfully happy. Blissfully happy,"

she cried out in a high voice as she jumped over the wheel before the

buggy came to a stop. Yes, they would probably have to send her away

very soon. "I wish I had been kinder to her when I had the chance,"

Dorinda thought, as she turned the mare toward home.

The next Sunday afternoon she asked Nathan for news of Geneva. It was

easy for her to speak of the Greylocks now since that dreadful encounter

had obliterated even the memory of jealousy.

"Every six months or so she's taken like that," Nathan answered. "Then

she goes clean out of her head; but they say it isn't as bad as the

moping in between the attacks."

"Is there nothing that can be done?"

"Oh, they'll have to put her away, sooner or later. Her father has tried

his best to get her to leave Jason, but she won't hear of it when she's

in her right mind. Once he took her home while she was deranged and kept

her in a room with barred windows. It didn't last, however, and as soon

as she came to her senses, she insisted on going back to Jason. They

lead a cat-and-dog life together, and when she is out of her head she

runs about telling everybody that she had a child and he murdered it."

"Poor thing," said Dorinda. "She told me too."

"That's when she's crazy. As soon as she gets her senses again, you

can't make her leave him."

For a few minutes Dorinda was silent. When she spoke it was to remark

irrelevantly, "How little human beings know what is best for them."

"I didn't understand what you said, Dorinda."

"No matter. I was only thinking aloud."

It was a mellow October afternoon, and around them the fields were

resting after a fair harvest. As far as she could see, east, north,

west, the land belonged to her. Only toward the south there were the

pale green willows of Gooseneck Creek, and beyond the feathery edge she

saw the red chimneys of Five Oaks. But for those chimneys she would have

felt that the whole horizon was hers!

"They say Five Oaks will come under the hammer before long." Nathan's

gaze also was on the red smears in the sky. "It's mortgaged now for as

much as it'll ever bring, and there's trouble about the taxes."

A wild idea shot into her mind. "I suppose it will bring a good deal?"

"If it is put up at a forced sale, it will probably go for a song.

Nobody is buying land now. Amos Wigfall bought the old Haney place five

years ago for a dollar an acre. Some day, if he looks out, it will be

worth a hundred."

She looked at him with calculating eyes. "If I could buy Five Oaks, my

farm would be as big as Green Acres."

His neighing laugh broke out. "Good Lord, Dorinda, what would you do

with it?"

"I don't know what I'd do with it, but I want it. I'd give ten years of

my life for the chance of owning Five Oaks before I die."

His laugh dropped to a chuckle. "Now, that's downright queer because

I've been studying about bidding on it myself. It looks to me as if that

would be the only way to save my money."

"Well, I'd rather you'd own it than anybody else," she said grudgingly.

"But I'm going to the sale when it comes, and if I'm able to sell my

prize bull, I'm going to bid against you. I've got almost five thousand

dollars in bank."

"You'd better leave it there for the present. I wouldn't bid a cent on

the place if it wasn't for the fact that I own most of it already. It's

going to be hard to make anybody buy it. Just you wait and see."

"What will become of Jason?" she inquired abruptly.

Nathan looked dubious. "He'll go to work for James Ellgood, I reckon, or

more likely drink himself out of the way. But he's been doing better of

late, I hear. He was at church last Sunday in the Ellgood pew, looking

all spruced up, as if he hadn't smelt whiskey for a month."

Her next words came quickly, as if she were afraid of drawing them back

before they escaped. "Why didn't he ever go away after his father died?"

"He'd lost the wish, I reckon. Things happen like that sometimes. The

old man hung on to him until all the sap was drained dry."

"His father died years ago."

"It must be going on nine years or so." He stopped to calculate as he

did when he was adding up an account in the store. "Well, I reckon he'd

used up all his energy in wishing to get away. When the chance came, he

didn't have enough spirit left to take advantage' of it." He sighed.

"I've seen that happen I can't tell you how many times."

She looked away from him, and for a few minutes there was silence. Then

he made a sound between a gasp and a chuckle, and turning to glance at

him, she met an expression which she had never before seen in his face.

Her nerves shivered into repulsion, while she drew farther away. Why

were men so unaccountable? she asked herself in annoyance.

"I was just thinking," he stammered.

She regarded him with severity. After all, no one took Nathan seriously.

"I was just thinking," he began again, "that if you could make up your

mind to marry me, we might throw the two farms into one."

"To marry you?" She stared at him incredulously. "Are you out of your

head?"

He broke into an embarrassed laugh. "I reckon it sounds like that at

first," he admitted, "but I hoped you might get used to the idea if you

thought it over. It ain't as if I were a poor man. I'm about as

well-to-do as anybody round Pedlar's Mill, if you leave out James

Ellgood, and he's got a wife already, besides being too old. I ain't so

young as you, I know; but I'm a long ways younger than James Ellgood.

There ain't more than ten years' difference between us, and I think all

the world of you. You might have things your own way just as you're

doing now. I wouldn't want to interfere with you."

She was still gazing at him as if he were distraught. "I can't imagine,"

she replied sternly, "how you ever came to think of such a thing.". It

was absurd; it was incredible; and yet she supposed that even stranger

things had happened! She had seen enough of the world to know that you

took your husband, as Fluvanna observed, where you found him, and she

was troubled by few illusions about marriage.

His face turned the colour of beet juice while he looked at her with

humble, imploring eyes, like the eyes of young Ranger when they were

training him. "I was just thinking how useful I could be on the farm,"

he said apologetically. "You seemed so set on owning Five Oaks, and then

you like to have the children about."

The incredulity faded from her face. "I do like to have the children

about."

"Well, you know I'd never put myself in your way. You could have both

the farms to manage just as you like. I'd buy Five Oaks whenever it was

sold."

"Yes, the two farms could be thrown together--or farmed separately." Her

mind was still working over Five Oaks, not over the question of

marriage.

"Then couldn't you get used to the idea, Dorinda?"

His tone rather than his words awoke her with a start, to his meaning.

"The idea! You mean marriage? No, I couldn't do it. There's no use

thinking about it."

His face scarcely changed, so little had he dared hope for her consent.

"Well, I won't press you," he said after a minute, "but if the time ever

comes----"

She shook her head emphatically. "The time will never come. Don't let

that thought get into your head."

While she spoke her dispassionate gaze examined him, and she asked

herself, with a tinge of amusement, why the idea of marrying him did not

startle her more. He was ridiculous; he was uncouth; he was the last man

on earth, she told herself firmly, who could ever have inspired her with

the shadow of sentiment. Only after she had speculated upon these

decisive objections did she begin to realize that absence of emotion was

the only appeal any marriage could make to her. Her nerves or her senses

would have revolted from the first hint of passion. The only marriage

she could tolerate, she reflected grimly, was one which attempted no

swift excursions into emotion, no flights beyond the logical barriers of

the three dimensions.

"Of course, I'm not your equal," Nathan said abruptly. "You're a scholar

like your great-grandfather, and you've read all his books. You know a

lot of things I never heard of."

Dorinda laughed. "Much good books ever did me!" Much good indeed, she

reflected. "There's no use thinking about it; I could never do it," she

repeated in a tone of harsh finality, as she turned to walk homeward.

XVI

Two weeks later, one Saturday afternoon, Miss Seena brought over the new

clothes; and Dorinda sat up until midnight, taking up the belt and

letting down the hem of the black satin dress. When s put it on the next

morning and listened to Fluvanna's admiring, ejaculations, she

remembered the day she had first worn the blue nun's veiling and the

drive to church sitting beside Almira Pryde in the old carryall.

"You look like a queen, Miss Dorinda," Fluvanna exclaimed. "Thar ain't

nothin'----"

"Anything, Fluvanna."

"There ain't anything that gives you such an air as one of them

willow plumes."

"Those, Fluvanna. Yes, it does look nice," Dorinda assented, after the

correction. "I'm glad I got it black. It makes me look older, but there

isn't anything so distinguished."

A few hours afterwards, while she walked slowly up the aisle in church,

she felt rather than saw that the congregation, forgetting to stand up

to sing, sat motionless and stared at her from the pews. For the first

time in her life she tasted the intoxicating flavour of power. On the

farm, success was translated into well-tilled acres or golden pounds of

butter; but here, with these astonished eyes on her, she discovered that

it contained a quality more satisfying than any material fact. What it

measured was the difference between the past which Jason had ruined and

the present which she had triumphantly built on the ruins he had left.

In spite of everything that had happened, in spite of his betrayal of

her faith and the black despair that had wiped love out of her heart,

she, not he, was to-day the victor over life!

As she marched up the aisle, in her handsome, commonplace clothes, she

might have been a contented rustic beauty whose first youth was slowly

slipping away. A warm flush dyed her cheeks; her eyes were like blue

stars beneath the projecting shadow of her eyebrows; she carried the

willow plume high above the dusky cloud of her hair; and the luxurious

swish-swish of her satin skirt was as loud as the sound of wind in the

grass. Not until she reached the pew where she used to sit between her

father and mother, did she drop her eyes to the level of the

congregation and discover that Jason was sitting with the Ellgoods under

the high west window. She had not seen him face to face since the

afternoon of her father's funeral, more than ten years ago, and he

looked ages older, she thought, than she had remembered him. His skin

had lost the clear red-brown of health and acquired a leathery texture.

Though his hair was still red, there was a rusty edge where the light

fell on it. His moustache, which was too long, drooped in bedraggled

ends over his chin, as if he had fallen into the habit of chewing

tobacco--he who had always been so fastidious! He was dressed neatly

enough in his Sunday clothes; but sitting there in the broad band of

sunlight, he reminded Dorinda of a tree when the sap has dried, with the

brittle ashen brown leaves still clinging to the boughs. Even his hands,

which shook a little as they held the hymn book open in front of his

wife, were the hands of a man whose grasp had slackened. He was not yet

forty, but life had already used him up and flung him aside.

Suddenly, he raised his eyes from the book and their glances met and

crossed before they fell away again to the printed lines. In that

instant, something passed between them which could never be uttered

because it was profounder than speech. Resolute, imperious, her gaze

swept him! While her eyes, as hard and cold as a frozen lake, gave back

his reflection, she felt, with a shiver of terror, that the past had

never died, that it existed eternally as a wave in the sea of her

consciousness. Memory was there, flowing on, strong, silent, resistless,

with no fresher tides of emotion to sweep over and engulf it in the

flood of experience. In her whole life there had been only that one man.

He had held her in his arms. He would remain always an inseparable part

of her being. . . . Resentment struggled within her. All the strength of

her spirit rebelled against the tyranny of the past, against the burden

of a physical fact, which she dragged after her like a dead fish in a

net. She saw him harshly as he was, and she despised herself because she

had ever imagined him tenderly as he was not. As she opened her mouth to

sing, it seemed to her that she was choked with the effluvium of the old

despair. She shut her eyes while her voice rose with the hymn. Rain on

the shingled roof; rain on the bare red earth; rain on the humped

box-bush; rain on the bedraggled feathers of white turkeys. The face of

the old man emerging from the blue light in the room, mottled, flabby,

repellent. Memories like that. He meant nothing more to her now. Only

the beauty that had turned into ugliness. Only the happiness of which

she had been cheated. . . .

She was the last one to come out of church, and by the time she had

spoken to the minister and a few of the older members who stopped to

welcome her, the Ellgoods had driven away. She was glad that she did not

see Jason again; for the sight of him, though it no longer stirred her

heart, left that disagreeable pricking sensation in the nervous fibre of

her body.

Nathan and the children were waiting for her at the gate of the

churchyard, and she drove home with John Abner, while the others

followed in Nathan's new surrey with the fringed top.

"You look good enough to eat, Dorinda," the boy said admiringly. "You

ought to keep dressed up all the time."

She smiled down on him. "Much work I'd do on the farm! Ten years ago

they almost turned me out of church because I milked in overalls; but

they forgot that this morning when I went back wearing a willow plume."

There was no one in the world who adored her as uncritically as did this

boy with the clubfoot. He was a good boy, she knew, with a streak of

morbid melancholy which was curiously attractive to her adventurous

temperament. His face, with its bulging forehead and deep dark eyes,

hiding stars of light in them like gleams at the bottom of a well, was

an unusual one for a country boy, and made her wonder at times if there

could be more in him than any one suspected. In his childhood his

clubfoot had been a torment to him, and for this reason he had kept away

from the rough sports of other children.

"You'd rather farm than do anything else, wouldn't you, John Abner?" she

asked abruptly.

"Except read. I'm glad winter is coming, so I can stay in the house and

read."

"You wouldn't like to go to boarding school in the city?"

He shook his head, flinching as if from the cut of a whip. "Not with the

other boys. I'd rather stay in the country with Father and you and the

animals." His sympathetic understanding of animals was one of the

strongest bonds between them. From his birth he had known what it was to

suffer and endure.

"I hoped that the new kind of shoe would make it easier for you," she

said presently. "Is it comfortable?"

"If it weren't so heavy. They are all heavy."

She sighed, for her heart was drooping with pity. John Abner had

penetrated the armour of her arrogance in its one weak spot, which was

her diffused maternal instinct. The longing to protect the helpless was

still alive in her.

At home they found Fluvanna in a clean apron, with a blazing; fire and a

lavish Sunday dinner awaiting them. Roast duck with apple sauce, candied

sweet potatoes, tomatoes stewed with brown sugar, and plum pudding,

which was Nathan's favourite sweet. True, it was the one abundant meal

of the week; but while she sat at the head of her table listening to the

chatter of happy children, Dorinda remembered the frugal Sunday dinners

of her mother and father, and her eyes smarted with tears. That, she had

learned, was the hidden sting of success; it rubbed old sores with the

salt of regret until they were raw again.

In the hall, after dinner, while Dorinda was fastening a worn blue cape

over her satin dress, Nathan stood gazing thoughtfully up the staircase.

"Have you ever thought of putting a stove in the back hall, Dorinda?" he

asked. "It would make a lot of difference in the comfort of the house,

and it would help heat the bedrooms upstairs."

She turned and gazed at him, surprised at this fresh proof of his

ingenuity. Yes, it was a good idea; she wondered why she had never

thought of it herself. Indeed, since he had mentioned it, it seemed to

her that it was what she had always intended to do.

"If only we could have had it in Ma's lifetime," she said. "It would

have been such a help to her neuralgia."

"Yes, that's the trouble about getting comforts. We always remember that

other people went without them. I've got the carpets now that Rose Emily

wanted." After all, no one but Nathan had ever really understood her.

With the thought she asked herself incredulously if understanding had

anything whatever to do with love? Did people who loved ever understand?

Wasn't the misunderstanding even a part of love's divine madness?

"Yes, I ought to have done it long ago," she murmured inattentively.

"I'll order one, if you want me to. There's a catalogue at the store,

and I can get it at a discount. There are all sorts of contrivances for

saving fuel, too, so it won't cost as much as you'd imagine. These

newfangled stoves give twice as much heat as an open fire, and don't

burn one fourth as much fuel. It's a close sort of heat. You wouldn't

like it in your chamber, but it would be the very thing for this hall."

While they went out of doors together, she meditated upon the fact of

his usefulness. He was always thinking of ways and means to be

comfortable or economical before they occurred to her or to anyone else,

and he had what he called a knack for mending anything that was broken.

He was kind; he was honest in every fibre; he was neat in his appearance

for a farmer; and he was, she reflected cynically, almost emasculate in

his unselfishness. To be sure, he had habits which she disliked; but, as

she told herself with dispassionate realism, one couldn't have

everything. It never occurred to her that these habits might be broken

by marriage, for she was wise enough to perceive that a man's habits are

more firmly rooted than his emotions. What she felt was that in exchange

for his helpfulness she might learn to tolerate the things to which she

objected. What good ever came, she demanded impatiently, of trying to

make any one over? Hadn't her mother tried for forty years to make her

father stop chewing tobacco, and yet it was the last thing that he

relinquished. No, she had few illusions remaining. Though she still told

herself inflexibly that she could never make up her mind to marry

Nathan, she felt, in spite of her will, that the insidious force of

logic was gradually undermining her scruples. She had suffered too much

from love in the past ever to walk again with open eyes into the

furnace. Sex emotion, she repeated grimly, was as dead as a burned-out

cinder in her heart. But respect she could still feel, and a marriage

founded upon respect and expediency might offer an available refuge from

loneliness. As she grew older, the thing she feared most was not death,

not poverty even, but the lonely fireside.

She walked on, disheartened by indecision, and Nathan was obliged to

repeat his question twice before she heard what he was saying.

"Have you thought over what I asked you, Dorinda?" She shook her head.

"There's no use thinking."

His only answer was a comical sigh, and after a long pause she repeated

more sharply, "There's no use thinking about that."

Some hidden edge to her tone made him glance at her quickly. This was

another moment when the keenness of Nathan's perceptions surprised her.

"You'd be just as free as you are now," he said discreetly but

hopefully.

"I couldn't stand any love-making." Though the light bloomed on her lips

and cheeks, her eyes darkened with memory.

He sighed again less hopefully. What a pity it was, she thought, that

everything about him grew in the wrong way; his hair like moth-eaten

fur, his flat clownish features; his long moustache which always

reminded her of bleached grass. Well, even so, you couldn't have

everything. If the outward man had been more attractive, the inward one,

she acknowledged, would have been less humble; and when all was said and

done, few virtues are more comfortable to live with than humility.