That night she set up an old stretcher in the kitchen and made herself
a bed out of buggy robes and ragged quilts that had been discarded and
used as pads on the wagon seat. She used it the next night and the
night after that. It was a chilly and uncomfortable bed and on cold
nights she had to sleep in all her clothes; but week after week went by
and she showed no signs of wishing to leave it. After a few contrite
but clumsy attempts at reconciliation, Jerry, too, took the stretcher
as a thing accepted and permanent.
A sort of cold respect for each other grew up between them after the
quarrel on Christmas day. To both it had been a warning of the abyss
toward which they were tending, and they strove to maintain the outer
decencies of human intercourse. This was best done by avoiding each
other, having little to say and tending strictly to their own affairs,
interfering as little as possible with those of the other. After their
long siege of violent quarreling and mutual recrimination, this silence
that had settled down between them seemed almost like peace. But at
meals, over the corn cakes and rank salt hogmeat, they looked at each
other with hard, inimical eyes. When they spoke it was in tones flat
and dry from which all life had gone. A dreary oppression, dull, heavy
and deadening, weighed upon the breasts of both of them, went with
Jerry to the field and stayed with Judith as she shambled about the
kitchen. When he came in at night from the field she rarely spoke or
looked at him. Silently she slapped the corn cakes and fried meat on
his plate and they ate in a hostile silence which was not disguised by
the prattle and clamor of the children.
The stimulation that had come to Judith out of her determination to
have no more children died away as all stimulation must, leaving her
listless and slack. Daily she grew more slovenly about her work.
More and more her mind turned in upon itself, indifferent to her
surroundings, thinking its own thoughts. Through the dismal, shut-in
months of late winter and inclement spring she gradually drifted into
that way of life, perhaps because it was the only way in which she
could continue to endure the burden of existence.
When spring came at last in earnest and the mud dried up, Hat came
quite often to visit her and talked glibly of Luke's injustices, of
troubles with chickens and geese, of paper patterns and calicoes and
the latest bulletins from the "Farm Wife's Friend," and of new songs
that she had learned for the violin. She was rather glad of the break
these visits made in her monotony and envied Hat her diversity of
interests.
Once Hat came over with the triumphant news that she now had a bank
account of her own. She had sold the bay mare which was, she declared,
her rightful property; and before Luke could get hold of the money had
taken it to Clayton and deposited it.
"An' naow," she concluded, "I'll hev sumpin' woth while to think about,
seein' haow much I kin put to it."
Once she brushed a spider from her skirt.
"There, naow, Judy, that means a new dress. It's a sure sign. Jes fer
that I'll drive into taown to-morrer when Luke's to work an' buy me the
goods. Las' week I seen jes the piece I been a-wantin'."
And in truth Hat blossomed that spring in new dresses, frilled aprons
and sunbonnets. Preoccupied though Judith was with her own misery, she
could not help sensing a change in the bold, dark, childless woman. Her
talk consisted mainly of complaints about one thing and another; and
yet she gave Judith the feeling that she was especially well satisfied
with life and with herself. She seemed more than usually self-assertive
and blatant. She peered with more insistent curiosity into all the
details of her neighbor's household. Shafts of excess vitality radiated
from her and invaded irritatingly the younger woman's languor and
listlessness. Often in her presence Judith was seized by a shrinking
feeling as though she was a rabbit and a bird of prey was hovering
above her. Sometimes a strange look sprang out of Hat's eyes, a look
at once questioning, cunning, mocking, and triumphant. It flashed only
for the swiftest moment, then retired behind the mask of impassivity
with which country people cover their faces.
It was in April that they took Joe Barnaby's wife, Bessie Maud, away
to the insane asylum. For a long time she had been given to fits of
destructiveness, when she would break dishes, smash window panes and
try to tear up the furniture. These fits had of late been more frequent
and violent. One day in April she was seized with this urge to destroy,
and building a bonfire in the yard had thrown onto it chairs, bedding,
and clothes. She had done such things before; but this time her mania
had taken a worse turn. Joe, seeing the smoke from the fire and knowing
only too well what it meant, had run up just in time to save the baby,
which she was about to throw into the flames. That night they took her
away to the asylum. It was too bad, the neighbors all told each other.
But it wasn't as bad as it would have been a few years earlier when
the children were all small. Now Ruby, the eldest girl, was eleven and
big enough to cook the meals and take care of the baby; and at last
Joe would know what it was to have peace in his house, and that was
something.
One Saturday afternoon in May Jerry had gone to town for groceries
and was late getting home. When Judith had given the children their
supper and they had run away to play she sat on the doorstep to watch
the sunset, leaving the flies to swarm over the unwashed dishes. It
occurred to her that perhaps Bessie Maud had not been able to draw
comfort out of the sunset and the late twitter of birds, and that was
why life had gone so hard with her.
The sky was streaked with bands of light cirrus cloud, like sheep's
wool washed and teased apart. White and fleecy and ranked in regular
rows, they spread out over half the heavens like a great feather fan.
Toward the earth they gradually thickened until they formed a solid
bank. As the sun sank behind this bank, the light, fleecy clouds, which
grew sparser, finer and whiter as they neared the zenith, took on a
soft flush that turned the whole western sky into a harmony of faint
rose and tender blue.
Jabez Moorhouse, passing with a hayfork over his shoulder, stopped for
a few moments' chat; and they looked at the sky together, talking of
crops and of rain.
As they looked the faint, frail pink gradually deepened into a richer
rose, then glowed for a few passionate moments the color of intense
flame. The little delicate shreds high up in the sky were each a
slender whiff of spun gold, fine and pure. The under edges of the
clouds burned with the amber and scarlet of flame against a background
of shaded grays and purples. The grayish purple bank that lay along
the horizon was slashed here and there by bright swords of fire. The
burning clouds hung low, as if one might reach up and touch them. A
rosy flush hung over everything.
It seemed as if no color could be warmer, deeper, richer. And yet
incredibly as they gazed it grew before their eyes richer, warmer,
deeper, more vivid and intense, more full of living fire, until Judith
involuntarily held her breath in sympathy with nature in this her
supreme moment.
Short-lived it was, like every other supreme moment. A second after
it had reached the height of its intensity it began to fade and fall
away into ashes. As if a cold breath had passed over them, the little
tendrils of spun gold in the zenith turned almost instantly to gray.
Lower down the deeper colors lost their glow more slowly, melting back
into the surrounding purple. Soon there was left nothing but a somber
interweaving of purple gray and dull magenta.
"It's a heap like a man's life, hain't it," said Jabez, spitting into
the grass. "It begins happy an' simple, like them innocent pinks an'
blues; then turns flame colored when he grows to be a man an' learns to
know the love o' wimmin. But it don't stay that color long. Fust thing
you know it's gray, like his hair, what he has left of it. Yaas, Judy,
the young time's the on'y time. It's the same in dawgs an' mules, an'
the breath they draw hain't no diff'rent from ourn."
Looking at his bowed knees and shoulders, his great seamed hands, his
weatherbeaten face and the grizzled locks that curled behind his big
ears and straggled over the brick-red creases of his neck, she thought
how coarsened was every part of him except the fine, delicate lines
about his mouth.
"Hain't life woth livin', Uncle Jabez?" she asked.
He laughed a short, harsh laugh and fell silent.
"Waal, I dunno, Judy," he said at last, meditatively shifting his quid
of tobacco. "I reckon it makes a big diff'rence who you live it with
an' a bigger diff'rence yet what work yuh lay yer hand to. Both o' them
things, as I see it, is a matter of luck. An' if luck hain't with yuh--"
"Luck hain't been with you, Uncle Jabez?"
"Well, I reckon not. When I was a young feller I dearly loved to play
on the fiddle. I thought about fiddlin' all day an' dreamed about it
all night. But there wa'n't nobody to learn me haow to play, an' I
didn't have much chanct to try to learn myse'f, 'cause as soon as I
was big enough I had to make a hand in the field same's other boys.
I was raised up in one o' the dark counties where they grow the dark
terbaccer.
"When I was nineteen I married a purty, light-headed little gal, an'
for a while I forgot all about the fiddle. I loved that woman, Judy.
I poured out my heart like water for her. After a while I faound out
she liked another feller better'n me, an' I told her she'd best go off
with him. After she was gone I learned I'd been the laughin' stock o'
the whole countryside fer months. I was the last to find out about the
other feller. Sech things, you know, Judy, comes to every pair of ears
but one."
He paused and looked meaningly at her. She avoided his looks, pulled a
blade of ribbon grass and began splitting it between her long fingers.
"Well," he went on, "when I faound that out I took my clothes on the
end of a stick an' come over here where nobody knowed me. Since then
I've lived a spell with diff'rent wimmin' but I hain't never let none
of 'em git a holt on the tender end o' my feelin's. They cud quit me
termorrer or hev all the other men they liked fer all o' me. By sech
way o' livin' a man gits peace, but not much besides. Wimmin won't stay
long with a man that feels that way. Naow, I'm old an' eat my morsel
alone, I feel more satisfied than when I had a woman in the house. I
kin go an' come when I like, eat when I like, smoke an' drink all I
like, set over the stove of evenin's as late as I like, work as little
as I like. Sech life suits me purty good."
He paused and looked at her with a fine, sad smile of gentle irony. How
delicate, how inexpressibly fine and delicate, she thought, were the
lines about his mouth.
"Which would have meant more to you," she asked, "the fiddle or the
woman?"
He came and sat down on the step beside her.
"I reckon the fiddle, Judy. The world's chuck full o' wimmin; but a man
hain't got but one set o' gifts. If I could a learnt to play the fiddle
good I'd like enough forgot her long ago an' loved some other woman. As
it was, I couldn't take my mind away from thinkin' about her. An' the
kinder hard part of it is, if I saw the woman again to-day she wouldn't
mean no more to me than any other woman. On'y the feelin's I had for
her then I hain't never been able to forget."
"An' air you glad you're alive right naow?"
"I can't say I hain't, Judy. I reckon livin's made up more out of a lot
o' little things than any one big thing; an' there's a heap o' little
things I git injoyment out'n. Mebbe there hain't nobody in Scott County
likes a smoke an' a chew better'n what I do. Terbaccer an' a quiet back
door yard--sun 'ithout no wind--an' my mornin' glories an' rose bushes
to look at, them things gives peace and comfort, Judy. Naow, I hain't
got no woman araound to sweep me off'n the stoop, I set there through
a good many mornin's. I like my coffee an' corncake an' my bit o'
fried hogmeat when I git up; an' after it I like my pipe with the blue
an' gray streams o' smoke a-driftin' up into a sunbeam an' a-curlin'
raound among the little specks o' dust. I like to hear hens sing an'
cackle an' watch kittens play an' dawgs stretch theirse'ves in the warm
sun an' growl in their sleep a-dreamin' they're nippin' the heels o'
caows. I like the fust feel o' spring with frogs singin' in the holler,
an' the fust nip o' frost in fall, the smell o' burnin' leaves an'
cold, yaller sunsets. You stand a long time in the gray cold an' look
at them; an' when you go in it's dark inside an' you make up a fire an'
it feels good. I like to see the low sun shine along a field o' young
corn in spring an' through a grapevine in September. I like the sound
o' rain on the roof an' snow drivin' past the winder when the wind
whistles in the chimley. An' when there hain't much outdoors but mud
an' clouds I like fire. Fire's a rare fine thing, Judy. Naow I hain't
got no woman araound I kin set over it all I like. Sometimes when I set
late over the blaze my thoughts runs a bit gloomy; but that hain't the
fault of the fire. I git to thinkin' about when I was young an' life
was ahead o' me an' I'm like Jerusalem that remembers in the day of her
affliction an' her miseries all her pleasant things that were from the
days of old. When sech thoughts gits too bitter, there's sumpin that's
more comfortin' yet than fire, an' that's whiskey, good strong corn
whiskey."
"Why do you drink so much whiskey, Uncle Jabez?"
"'Cause when I got whiskey warmin' my belly I feel like I was really
the man I onct hoped I was goin' to be. Hain't that reason enough,
Judy? I'm a old man now an' my spirit's broke, an' a broken spirit
dries up the bones. I gotta hev a drink now an' then to limber me up.
You know the Bible says: 'Give strong drink to him that is ready to
perish an' wine onto the bitter in soul. Let him drink an' forget his
poverty an' remember his misery no more.'"
The last words vibrated into the gathering night like a melancholy bell.
"Then you air bitter in soul, Uncle Jabez, spite of all the things you
enjoy?"
"Yes, Judy, I can't say I hain't."
In the pause that followed he turned his head and looked at her keenly.
She was sitting staring out toward the disappearing horizon, her
shoulders sagging, her arms hanging limply at her sides. Lassitude
physical and spiritual spoke in her blank face and slumping body.
"It makes me feel bad, Judy, to see you go like all the rest of us, you
that growed up so strong an' handsome, so full o' life an' spirits.
I've watched you sence you was a baby growin' like a pink rosebud, an'
then blossomin', so beautiful to see. And now--"
Huskily his voice went silent. He made squares and triangles on the
ground with his heel.
"Sometimes I've thought that mebbe if you an' me'd been of an age, an'
not me near old enough to be your grandaddy, you an' me together, Judy,
might a made sumpin out of our lives, anyway got in a little play along
with the grind. Mebbe so, mebbe not. Whichever way it don't do no good
to figger about it--ner no harm neither."
He smiled again his fine, dry smile.
After he was gone and she had watched his broad, bowed back disappear
down the side of the ridge, she sat looking out across the wide expanse
of country to the horizon. The glow of the sunset had faded and there
was nothing left but a few broken horizontal bars of pale saffron,
backed by gray and lavender. Between her eyes and the saffron bars the
long stretch of hills and valleys was sinking swiftly into darkness.
They looked at her palely across the gloom-filled distance with a sad,
horizontal gaze, sad and level, like her own.
At last she got up abruptly from the doorstep and went into the house
and to the bottom shelf in the cupboard where Jerry kept his rarely
used demijohn of whiskey. She took out the corncob stopper, poured a
few spoonfuls into a teacup and tasted it gingerly. It burned her lips
and throat and some of it went down the wrong way. She made a wry face,
coughed, gagged, rushed to the water bucket and drank a dipperful of
water, then slackly set about gathering up the supper dishes.
She made no further attempt to find the cheer that lay in the demijohn;
but as the weeks went by something of Jabez' poise and calm seemed to
have settled on her spirit. Often, thinking of their talk and seeing
in memory his fine, sad smile, the irritations of the household fell
away from her and she seemed as if enfolded in a twilight peace. Having
discovered its charm, she began to wear this memory as an amulet.
Through the spring and summer she spent much of her time in the garden
and barnyard, leaving the house to clean itself. She raised chickens,
geese, and turkeys and even bought a pair of rabbits from Aunt Selina
and started a little rabbit colony in hutches built against the south
side of the shed. Here the children were happy running about barefoot,
digging in little gardens of their own, feeding the geese and chickens
and poking carrots and clover into the rabbit hutches; and for the
first time in their lives the mother and children moved together in
harmony. When Jerry came home from the field and found them in the yard
shutting up the broods of little chicks for the night and listened to
their excited chatter and prattle, he passed on into the house feeling
lonely and morose.
"I reckon I hain't much good here fer anything but to fetch in the
money fer the shoes an' groceries," he said to himself, as he splashed
the water over his face.
The young fellows were back from the war now--those who had not
been killed. Ziemer Whitmarsh came home shell-shocked and good for
nothing. He hung about the neighbors' barnyards drooling silly talk and
remembering nothing. "What could you expect," everybody said, "when it
was in the family anyway?"
"A sword is upon the boasters an' they shall become fools," Jabez
Moorhouse was heard to mutter, as he looked after him with a shrug that
was half pity, half contempt.
Marsh Gibbs bragged unceasingly about his exploits and his power to
turn shot and shell and was listened to with respectful interest until
it became known that he had got no further than Panama, where he had
done nothing more exciting and dangerous than drive a mule team.
With the return of the men from the war an infectious restlessness and
discontent pervaded the barnyards. The talk was all of hard times,
of war prices that were not coming down and of the foolishness of
bothering with tobacco. Some spoke of moving over into Indiana, others
of going to Cincinnati, though few had the courage or money to go
beyond talk. There was much robbing of hen roosts and stables and a
general and oft expressed feeling among the old folks that things were
going from bad to worse.
With August the grasshoppers came in great numbers. Luke Wolf said it
was the hard times that brought them. Grasshoppers and hard times, he
declared, were never far apart. However they did little to make the
times harder, as they could do but small damage to the crops. Tobacco
they would not touch and corn was beyond their reach. They were a bit
hard on alfalfa and garden stuff, but they made up for it by fattening
the geese and turkeys.
It gave pleasure to Judith and delight to the children to tend and
watch the little chicks and geese and turkeys as they grew into strong,
stocky birds. And at sundown, when they all came up to the roosts, the
yard was as crowded and busy as a town on fair day, noisy too with the
crowing, quacking and gobbling of the young males who grew daily in
self-importance. But as the fall came on and the young turkeys ranged
further afield and found abundance of food and grasshoppers, they began
to fail to come up for the evening scatter of corn, a tree in the woods
often seeming to them a pleasanter roosting place than the barn roof.
Judith did not like to have them roosting away from home. She knew that
if any of the neighbors happened upon them they would disappear one by
one.
Once, when she had not seen them for several days, she left the
children with Aunt Selina in the late afternoon and started out to look
for them. Loitering through the late glow of the September day she
half forgot the turkeys in the pleasure that came to her from asters
and goldenrod, red maples, and yellow beeches. Almost without thinking
what she was doing she began to stray along the path that led in the
direction of the old shanty between the hills.
When she came within sight of the deserted house, the roof of which
was just visible above the rank growth surrounding it, she stood for a
moment looking across the last red shafts of sunlight that fell toward
it through the trees. A half smile of weary cynicism lifted her upper
lip, and with a scarcely perceptible shrug she was about to turn away.
Suddenly she drew quickly back behind the trunk of a tree.
Peeping around the tree, like a child playing hide and seek, she saw
Hat Wolf appear on the outer edge of the shrubbery that grew about the
old house. As she came out, Hat craned her neck and peered cautiously
on all sides, scanning carefully the length and breadth of the hollow
and the hillsides beyond up to the rim of the sky line. At last,
feeling satisfied that no one was looking, she bolted as fast as she
could, and her great hips and broad back were soon lost from sight in
the nearest thicket.
It was turkeys that usually took Hat away from home. Judith looked
around for turkeys. There was not a turkey in sight, nor, strain her
ears as she might, could she catch any sound suggestive of their near
presence. Perhaps some other business than to see if turkeys were
making it a resting place had brought Hat to the old house. Judith
had begun to shrewdly suspect what the business might be when she was
confirmed in her conjecture by seeing a man emerge from the thicket in
the same place that Hat had appeared. He did not peer about as Hat had
done but walked away slowly, his head sunk on his breast, his hands
plunged deep in his pockets, careless whether he was seen or not. In
the dim light she did not recognize him at the first glance. When she
looked again she saw that it was Jerry.
A hot wave of anger surged through her, her fists clenched and for
the moment her whole being was one great hatred of Hat. Then a dozen
conflicting emotions seized upon her, seeking to claim her at the same
time. She wanted to run after Hat and spit in her face and call her the
names that rose unbidden to her tongue. At the same moment she wanted
to run in the opposite direction after Jerry and say to him things that
she knew could bring the twitch of agony to his features. This desire
had hardly risen in her when it was merged into the impulse to throw
her arms about his neck and weep away her storm of struggling passions
on his breast. He alone she knew had power to comfort her. But could
she go to him for comfort? No, nothing in the world should make her go
to him.
For a long time she was unable to gather herself together. Her whole
being seemed some inert, passive instrument through which impulses,
thoughts and feelings came and went of their own accord without any
power of her will to control them. Thoughts of Hat made her clench her
fists again and flare with lightning flashes of anger. Thoughts of
Jerry brought mingled emotions that, whether she would or not, fought
frantically within her. Helplessly she fluttered and struggled like an
old rag blown this way and that in some bleak dooryard where the winds
meet.
Gradually the struggle weakened, and the old cold oppression closed
down upon her, stonier, more inexorable than before. She felt drearily
lonely and aloof as on the day when she had run away from the stripping
of hog guts. Only this time she did not cry. She seemed to have grown
too old and hardened for tears.
As her emotions sank and her mind began to work, she told herself
coldly how silly she was to care, how stupid to be surprised, how
unreasonable to be angry, how senseless every way she looked at it.
Yet she had to keep on looking at it, turning it over and over in her
mind, viewing it from this angle and that angle. If it had been almost
any other woman it wouldn't have seemed so bad, she told herself.
But Hat! How had he allowed himself to sink so low? She felt herself
drenched in a bitter flood of contempt for him--and for herself.
The sun had gone down long ago and it was growing dark when she moved
at last from the place where she had been standing. But instead of
going toward home, she went on down the hill to the old house and
peered in at the gaping black doorway. Yes, it was there, looking
just the same, the bed of branches and dry leaves that she and the
preacher had made. It was still warm, she had no doubt! And suddenly
the walls of the old house rang with a hard, sardonic laugh. Whatever
sordid tragedies they had witnessed, and doubtless they were many, the
rain-streaked walls had never echoed to an unkinder sound. With a shrug
she turned away.
Nevertheless, when she started to open up the stretcher that night to
make her bed, she found herself hesitating; and there was a softened
moment when she almost fled to Jerry. The impulse passed without her
giving way to it, and she continued to unfold the ragged quilts.