She felt less abjectly miserable after she had learned the cause of her
distress of body. As time passed, her symptoms became gradually less
violent, and at last disappeared altogether. The nausea passed away,
and she was able to eat again and enjoy her food. The pictures on the
wall took on their old, natural look; and she got out Lizzie May's
present from under the sheets and pillow slips in the bureau drawer and
found it once more a delight to her eyes.
It was good to feel like herself once more and to be able to get
pleasure instead of loathing from the multitudinous small things that
make up the major part of life. It was like waking up from some dismal
nightmare and finding the earth still a good and pleasant place. The
happiness of freedom regained more than equaled the irk of the old
bondage. And as Judith stretched and laughed and enjoyed the rain and
the sun and ate heartily and loved Jerry more than she had ever loved
him before and felt herself overflowing with physical wellbeing and
spiritual content, she knew the joy of reacting to perhaps the most
powerful stimulant in life, the elixir of sharp contrast.
And now that she was well again there was plenty of work for her to do.
The tobacco, which had survived the warm, damp seasons fatal to many
a tobacco crop, must be stripped and stripped quickly, so that Jerry
could haul it off to market before the price dropped. Jerry had bulked
the tobacco early in November, and had been stripping for some time.
But it was slow work for one pair of hands. Now that Judith was able to
help him, things went faster.
They got up in the dark, chilly winter mornings long before it was
day, ate breakfast and did the morning chores by lamplight, and were
ready to go out into the slow, gray dawn while the sky was still only
faintly alight and the familiar outlines of the barnyard only dimly
visible. The last thing that they did before leaving was to scatter
food for the hens, which had not yet come from the roosts. Then they
climbed the hill to the ridge path that led to the big tobacco barn.
At the far end of the ridge, the tobacco barn lifted its weathered bulk
into the sky. Built on the highest point of land, the wide sweep of
lonely fields and pastures dropped away from it in every direction. Its
roofs fell from the ridgepole with the broad sweep of a buzzard's wing;
and it seemed like some great bird brooding over the wide, solitary
expanse, or like some gigantic, incense-breathing temple built by these
poor shanty dwellers to their one god, the all-powerful god of toil.
From its point of vantage it dominated the landscape, somber, strong,
and implacable.
But to Jerry and Judith it was only a tobacco barn and they hurried to
it as the factory hand goes to his daily dungeon.
By the time they reached the little stripping room that leaned wearily
against the tobacco barn, it would be light enough to begin to strip.
They shared this stripping room with Hat and Luke, the two couples
working at opposite ends of the little oblong box. Sometimes Hat
and Luke would be there already, and in that case the fire would be
lighted. If they were the first to arrive, Jerry would quickly light
the fire in the little rusty box stove and they would settle down to
work.
All day long they would stand stripping the soft brown silk leaves from
the thick, woody brown stalks, tying them in bunches and assorting them
according to color and texture. The softest, silkiest, most pliable,
and lightest colored leaves were the best in quality. Descending from
this there were many grades ending in the scraggy, reddish top leaves,
torn and discolored leaves and leaves that had been touched by frost.
At noon the two couples, still at opposite ends of the room, would eat
the lunches that they had brought with them and immediately fall to
work again, working steadily until the short winter day was over and
the twilight blurred the shades of brown before their eyes.
It was strange and unnatural how little conversation went on among
these four young people as they stood working together day after day.
Judith would have liked to talk and often wondered why she and the
others did not talk more. Sometimes she made a deliberate attempt to
start conversation; but it always ended in nothing. There hung over
them always a heavy air of self-consciousness and constraint that
smothered all natural spontaneity. There were several private and
personal reasons for this. Jerry continued to nurse the old grievance
of the stolen tobacco plants, and added to it the suspicion that Luke
was getting away with some of the cream of his crop. He could steal a
good many bunches without the possibility of their being missed, and
Jerry opined that he was just the man to do it.
The minds of Hat and Luke dwelt largely upon the subject of money.
They had one all-consuming desire in common, which was to get their
crop stripped and on the market before the price fell. In this at
least they were at one; aside from it their thoughts and desires were
their own. Hat meditated upon what she had been reading in her latest
copy of the "Farm Wife's Friend," mused upon her wrongs and Luke's
shortcomings, and toyed gingerly, yet deliciously with thoughts of
intrigue. Sometimes she lifted her black eyes to Jerry and saw that he
was strong, healthy and handsome, then forgot him the next moment in
thoughts of some imaginary lover.
Luke, in the short intervals of thoughts of gain, thought about the
fox that he had hunted the night before and the good swigs of whiskey
that he had had at Bob Crupper's out of a gallon jug stopped with a
corncob. And he remembered how good the whiskey had made him feel.
Not infrequently his mind wandered from these thoughts to dally with
meditations more vague but more attractive. Sometimes when Judith
lifted her head she met his little blue eyes fixed upon her with
a look, the meaning of which was unmistakable. Instantly he would
withdraw his eyes and work furiously at his task.
Once Jerry surprised one of these looks. His face flushed a dark,
angry red and his fist involuntarily doubled, the knuckles protruding
formidably. He opened his mouth, then thought better of it and closed
it again. Luke had not noticed that he had been observed; and Judith,
absorbed in her work of sorting, had not seen either Luke or Jerry. The
little pantomime had taken only a second to perform and was gone as
though nothing had happened.
Once Hat surprised this look and shot a lightning glance from under
her heavy black eyebrows to see if Judith was answering it. Reassured
from this direction, she turned her bold eyes and cast a black look
of uncontrollably furious jealousy at her husband who was now bending
again over his tobacco.
So the little human comedy went on; and Judith, the only one who was
not cherishing ulterior motives or covert suspicions, found her natural
desire for companionship swamped in this heavy undertow of suspicion,
greed, craftiness and lust. There is an idea existing in many minds
that country folk are mostly simple, natural and spontaneous, living
in the light of day and carrying their hearts on their sleeves. There
is no more misleading fallacy. No decadent court riddled with lust of
power, greed, vice, and intrigue, and falling to pieces of its own
rottenness, ever moved under a thicker atmosphere than that which
brooded over the little shanty where these four fresh-cheeked young
country people stood stripping tobacco.
They sighed with relief when the long job was over and the tobacco was
ready for market.
Tobacco was an unusually good crop that year and Jerry's half amounted
to nearly two tons. In addition to his own tobacco, he was hauling a
small crop for one of the neighbors, so his load was a heavy one. It
was an exciting morning when the great, towering load stood outside the
tobacco barn with four horses attached in the first gray glimmer of the
dawn, and Jerry, perched on the high seat, cracked his whip over the
four broad backs, and started out on the thirty mile trip to Lexington.
When he came home next day there was a check for three hundred and
eighty-four dollars and seventy-six cents folded in the inside pocket
of his coat. His tobacco had brought the high average of ten cents a
pound. He had never been so proud and happy in his life as when he
opened the check and spread it before Judith's delighted eyes. There
was money to finish paying for the horses and money to put in the bank.
His joy was marred only by the knowledge that Luke had averaged a cent
a pound more for his crop, a knowledge which confirmed him in the
suspicion that some of his finer grades had been stolen.
As Judith's waist measure increased, and it became apparent to
everybody who saw her that she was with child, she became the recipient
of the advice and confidence of all the women of the neighborhood. The
confidences were many and varied; and the advice of one woman often
flatly contradicted that of another. But they were all alike delivered
with an air of conclusive authority. She found that when these women
spoke to her about her pregnancy they adopted a manner almost identical
with that which had revolted her in Hat: an air of great intimacy and
secrecy, as though the subject was of such a private nature that it
concerned only the talker and listener and brought the two together
into a close and exclusive atmosphere. With this was combined a
certain archness and playful levity which seemed to Judith the very
soul of lewdness. Jerry's mother, Aunt Mary Blackford, a well meaning
soul according to her lights, was one of the worst offenders; and she
presumed upon her relationship, as relatives have a habit of doing.
Judith grew to dread the approaches of these women as one loathes and
dreads a pestilence. She resented their insinuating interference in
a matter which she wished to concern only herself and Jerry; and the
manner of their interfering seemed to her vile and disgusting.
After having endured several lengthy visits, she learned to lock the
door and hide in the bedroom when she saw a female figure approaching
over the brow of the hill. The visitor would try the door, and finding
it locked would knock loudly and imperatively, then wait a short time
and knock again. Having satisfied herself that there was no one at
home, she would scrutinize the dooryard more or less closely, according
to the extent of her curiosity, and at last turn away and plod up the
hill again. Not until she was quite out of sight would Judith dare to
open the door.
Sometimes, however, she was not fortunate enough to see the visitor in
time to feign absence from home. This was the case one afternoon when
Aunt Maggie Slatten, the mother of Hat, and of many other children,
bore down upon her.
They had not long since finished dinner. Jerry had just left the house
to go back to his spring plowing, for it was February, and Judith was
washing the dishes, when the door was unexpectedly opened and disclosed
Aunt Maggie occupying the major part of the door space. She heaved in
and sat down heavily in a chair, which creaked at the onset of her
tremendous weight.
"Land alive, Judy, it's a hard climb over them hills," she gasped,
laboriously taking off her mud-encrusted overshoes and setting them
under the stove to dry. "An' the roads is that deep in mud, a body kin
hardly pull their feet along. But I hearn haow you was in the family
way. An' knowin' it was your first an' haow you didn't have no mammy, I
felt I jes had to come daown an' set with you a while. Well, an' haow
air you a-feeling', Judy?"
Judith sensed at once the familiar aura that had become her abhorrence.
There was an air of condescension, too, as from one who confers a
favor. She had never liked Aunt Maggie.
"I'm a-feelin' all right," she answered coldly, and went on washing the
dishes.
"Well, that's good, Judy. It's a great blessin' to be well."
Having disposed of her overshoes, she laid aside her black sateen
sunbonnet and started to divest herself of her outer garment. This task
proved too much for her.
"I reckon you'll have to give me a little he'p here, Judy," she
breathed, already winded by her efforts. Judith went over and helped
her to peel the wrap from her fat arms and shoulders. It was an
ancient garment called some decades earlier, when it had been new and
fashionable, a dolman. It was of broadcloth, now faded into a greenish
tinge, and it was trimmed with fringe, which was somewhat greener than
the cloth. She laid the dolman over the back of a chair with the care
and reverence due to best apparel and sat down again, smoothing her
white apron over her lap.
Aunt Maggie was a woman of great girth. She had a large, flabby face
of the color of cold boiled veal, so many large chins that they quite
obscured what might have been her neck, a colorless, thin-lipped
mouth and small, piercing, light gray eyes which gave Judith the
uncomfortable feeling that they were bent upon prying into the
innermost recesses of her private affairs. She had a way of asking a
question in a sudden, direct and commanding way and accompanying it
with a swift, searching look from her keen gray eyes, which seemed to
say that she was entitled to the whole truth and she meant to have it.
Undaunted by Judith's assertion of present perfect health, an assertion
which seemed to Aunt Maggie to be somehow rather indelicate, she
proceeded, as one vested with authority, to inquire into the earlier
history of Judith's pregnancy and to wrest from her admissions upon the
basis of which she launched forth into the subject that she had come
to discuss. She had a hoarse male voice and the air of one accustomed
to dictate to others. Glancing about from time to time, as though
constantly mindful of the fact that walls might have ears, she related
to Judith all the details that she could remember--and her memory was
excellent--concerning her own many pregnancies and the pregnancies of
various of her neighbors and kinsfolk.
After a while Aunt Maggie's stream of talk began to flag. There was no
stimulation to be gotten from Judith, who asked no questions and made
few comments. And even a woman of fifty-three who cannot read or write,
but has had seven children and three miscarriages, cannot talk forever
on the pathology of pregnancy without at least some little assistance
from her listener.
The talk began to be punctuated by heavy silences.
The whole afternoon was spent in this way, the silences growing longer
and heavier as time dragged on. Still Aunt Maggie made no move to go.
"And where's the baby clothes, Judy?" she inquired. "Fetch 'em an' let
me have a look at the dear little things."
"I hain't got any made yet, Aunt Maggie," answered Judith, putting a
stick of wood into the fire.
"What, no baby clothes yet! Why, Judy Pippinger, hain't you 'shamed of
yerse'f? Why, I'd a thought you'd 'a' bin sewin' fer the baby this four
months back."
"How many months' sewin does it take to cover a little infant a foot
long?" inquired Judith. "I 'lowed I could run 'em all up in a day on
the old machine at dad's."
Aunt Maggie was aghast at this sacrilege.
"I never put in a stitch for one o' my babies that wa'n't done by
hand," she proclaimed self-righteously.
Judith mentally reviewed the members of Aunt Maggie's family, a heavy,
snub-nosed, dull-eyed swarm, and wondered in just what way they showed
the benefits of hand-sewn baby clothes. But she said nothing. Aunt
Maggie was too dominating and forceful a personality to have her
prejudices challenged.
At last the February day began to gray to a close. The little window
admitted less and less light; and Judith, hoping to hasten Aunt
Maggie's departure, lighted the lamp.
"It's sinful to waste kerosene, Judy," commented her visitor. "You
could 'a' gone a good half hour more 'ithout the light. 'Waste not,
want not,' is a true sayin'. Well, I'll hev to be a-gittin' back home
an' see to supper an' the milkin'. The young uns don't stir hand ner
foot if I hain't there to tell 'em."
With alacrity Judith helped Aunt Maggie on with her dolman, and even
knelt down on the floor and put on her overshoes. Seeing her at last
really prepared to leave, she felt of a sudden quite kindly toward
her visitor and suffered a twinge of shame at having treated her so
coldly. She smiled in a cordial and friendly way as she ushered Aunt
Maggie out of the house.
But when the door had closed behind her visitor the smile vanished and
a look of empty weariness settled upon her face. It seemed as though
Aunt Maggie still sat in the room and with her all the other stuffy old
women of the neighborhood. Their prying eyes leered at her out of the
gloomy corners. From their presence issued a stifling and oppressive
aura.
When Jerry came in he found her sitting slackly in the old rocking
chair, her long hands hanging limp like dead things.