By means of secret charms to draw
All creatures living beneath the sun.
FIRST VOICE, _arguing_: Tell him how it is here. Say, “As an
old friend, Frank, I’ll tell you my situation....”
THEODOSIA: I’ll say nothing. Shut your blabber.
SECOND VOICE: Last night while you were asleep a great black
face, a man’s face, mouth open, teeth wide, bloody throat, came
swimming, tonight will come swimming close into your eyes, into
the very light of your brain. Swims up into your sight.
She turned quickly toward the window to dispel the too-vivid dream and
looked at the boughs of the trees as they stood as cold lace against
the sky. Across the steep ledge of dull light some crows were moving on
stiff wings, the movements of the birds and the birds being two separate
things, unrelated. When the birds were gone the movement remained,
sobbing against the wall of light.
* * * * *
A morning in January cut across the air in a different way from a
morning in some former month, she observed. The sky beyond the matted
twigs of the trees crowded outward in unequal grays, but the twigs bore
upward their January buds that were swollen in spite of the cold. She
began to think of the Promethean substance, fire, diligently admired by
man and guarded. First a few bits of thin wood at the end of a match,
a faint sulphurous odor, a frail burning daintily coaxed to life and
tenderly nursed by the shaded palm of a hand. The smoke would arise
heavily, unwarmed as yet, and the blaze would spread and lie cautiously,
perilously, buried under the damp smouldering wood. Another splinter and
another, and then the blaze grows slowly, spreading laterally, having
consumed the first splint and turned it to a bent cinder of red ash. Wood
is laid across the steady blaze now and the fire laps lovingly around it.
The cold slips back from the hearth and the breast reaches toward the
warmth, the hands feel for it, outstretched. One is glad for it, grateful
to it. In the northern zones man could not live without it. His life is
owed to it. If the Promethean spell is lost man would shrink down toward
the tropics, though the men might venture into the cold regions to hunt.
Woman and fire are married now forever; she would have to have fire for
herself and for the young.
She drew her hands under the coverlet to warm them and looked across
at the dead hearth where the last of the wood was burnt. The pile in
the wood-lot, saved for the evenings with the fiddle, would last, she
thought, for four more burnings, and her picturing mind slipped along
the stack as it had stood in autumn in the wood-yard, the knotted edges
of the hickory protruding, the lichened beech sticks that were weathered
and aerated, phantoms now. A few dry flakes of snow were falling, passing
the opened window in a slanted line. Once man had got it he could never
live without the Promethean gift, she thought, her gaze not lifted from
the passing snow to the dead hearth but seeing both in one widespread
plane of vision without focus.
Accustomed-unaccustomed sounds came from somewhere below. The
liniment-man was at the door, the aunt crouching under an old cape
receiving her purchases from the portico. His voice:
“Sakes-alive! It’s weatheren outside today. A right hard winter it is, I
reckon. But it won’t be long now. No teacher yet for the Spring Valley
school. Folks over there is right put-to to find a teacher. Miss Hettie
up and married in the middle of the term and went off, resigned and went.
Old Ronnie Beam’s wife has got a fine new girl up there, ten pounder,
they say. I’ll tell you this-here, it’s weather. But it won’t be long
now.”
The noises below sank to the usual delicate click and remote thump of
silence, the front door having long since been closed and the steps
having gone uncertainly back into the hallway.
SECOND VOICE: Old Ronnie Beam. Heaven sake! Father Time has
begotten. There’s no end to it. Seventy years old.
FIRST VOICE: Why didn’t she take some clean meal and make a
mush over her fire? Eat it hot with salt.
SECOND VOICE: The habit of the locked storeroom.
THIRD VOICE: Thank God she hasn’t got lice. What would she do
to get rid of vermin?
THEODOSIA: Coal-oil out of the lamp. Kills, they say.
THIRD VOICE: A ten-pound girl. I tell you that-there, it’s
weather.
FIRST VOICE: The dog bread is not bad bread to eat; a little
ashy, perhaps. Unsifted meal. Slobbered over by the two
bitches, Tilly and Old Mam.
SECOND VOICE, _softly_: She eats the dog bread.
THIRD VOICE: A small musical talent. A limited achievement in
music.
THEODOSIA: Small talents should not be allowed. Small talents
are treason. They shouldn’t be.
In the night she lay half asleep, running with the dogs as they hunted in
the wooded slopes back of the fields. Young Blix, Nomie, Speed, Congo,
they were on the trail of a hare, of a fox. She ran with them down the
woods and pounded the earth of the plowed field, keen to the scent. She
howled with them when the smell of the fox was renewed where the fence
crossed the track. Congo turned toward her beyond the water of the creek
when they had lashed swiftly over, clattering the rocks and dashing
the spray. She ran neck to neck with Congo, seeing into his red mouth,
feeling his flying breath, his wide jaw. At the foot of the walnut tree
they were on the varmint, all their teeth in his side, in his flank,
leaping over him, tearing at his hide, emptying out his entrails, her
teeth in his flesh.
* * * * *
One day after the evening meal below-stairs she turned to the hearth and
broke a piece of one of the corn-pones that lay there withering under
the heat since morning. She carried the bread to her room and ate a part
of it as she sat before the cold hearth. The sticks were sacred to the
fiddle and she did not burn one that night. Later there was speaking.
FIRST VOICE: This is the whole story of the earth. He made love
like a tomcat. Cat guts make fiddle strings. Cat guts hale
souls out of men’s bodies.
THIRD VOICE: The daughter of the Don Juan of the Kentucky
villages. God knows!
FIRST VOICE: The first to be born as far as is known at present
was Lethe. River of forgetfulness. Her name shall be Lethe,
saying, I forgot myself. A careless brown wench in a love mood
and I forgot myself.
THIRD VOICE: Then Americy. A whole continent to name an
incontinent hour.
THEODOSIA: A sad, kind-voiced creature. Given to religious
practices.
THIRD VOICE: Then Theodosia, given the surname Bell, the first
so honored. Named for Theodosia Singleton, born Bell, sister to
the Old War Horse. Godmother sucks all day at the sugar-tit of
books, turns back again to the nipple to avoid knowledge.
SECOND VOICE: I drink to the health of the unbegotten!
THIRD VOICE: Then Stiggins. Curious eyes bent down at the
corners. Slobbery mouth. A steel-cunning in his hand. Elastic
speed, recoil and reach.
FIRST VOICE: Man is a nervous system. I once saw a picture of a
man, a real likeness.
SECOND VOICE: I drink to the health of the unbegotten!
[_Shouting._] I drink to the health!
FIRST VOICE: He looked like something you might expect to see
under a microscope. A ten-thousand-footed octopus, a rigmarole,
a many-fanged serpent. A real likeness.
THEODOSIA: Something you might see under a microscope?
SECOND VOICE: A cunning in his hand, sewed up in a dull fist.
Speed, recoil, reach. Stands above it a slobbery mouth.
FIRST VOICE: Annie, then. Fifth child. White, delicate. Fair
hair, gray eyes, a frail body.
THEODOSIA: An angel among the white angels of the graves. All
the sweetness of the earth brought into one frame. A tired
little child, used to call to me to wait, gentled by sickness
and pain maybe. Her little mouth with the fresh dew of God on
it.
FIRST VOICE: She was a nervous system, like all the others.
SECOND VOICE: Something you might expect to see under a
microscope.
THIRD VOICE: James Henry Burden, then, sixth child born to
Horace and first male heir to the house of Burden. I baptize
thee, James Henry Burden, in the name of the.... Second male
in the house of Bell, as far as is known. Easy to know. Sweet,
blonde languors among the cushions in a portico.
FIRST VOICE: I saw the picture of a man, a real speaking
likeness. It was a ten-thousand-footed octopus.
THEODOSIA: What color was it?
FIRST VOICE: White and gray. They called the stuff white matter
and gray matter.
THEODOSIA: Excellent names.
FIRST VOICE: A ten-thousand-footed serpent, every foot a feeler
out to feel something.
SECOND VOICE: A maw in the middle of it, the chief part, the
chief part set in the middle, a hungry enlargement in the
alimentary gut.
THIRD VOICE: Another maw in the lower middle, the chiefest
chief part, another hungry entrail, if you don’t like the short
word.
FIRST VOICE: A little knob, a very little knob on the top. I
saw the true likeness. An infinite number of feelers running
out all ways, shaped like a serpent, and a very little knob on
the top.
THEODOSIA: You couldn’t blaspheme the human mind, you couldn’t
ever. To try to lower yourself by your own bootstraps. It
wouldn’t operate, that’s all. You might try ever so hard, but
you couldn’t do it. Stumble? Fall over your own boots and
stumble, yes, but if you did you’d never know it. What you
didn’t know couldn’t happen.
SECOND VOICE: Oh talk! Which of the commandments have you not
broken? Every last God’s ten of the lot.
FIRST VOICE: There ought to be more than ten, ought to be about
ten thousand more commandments. One for every nerve-end.
THIRD VOICE: A man could keep all ten and still be a writhing
devil in hell.
SECOND VOICE: The whole thing draws itself inside its own maw,
lies down to sleep in its snake’s nest, replete, when it has
enough.
FIRST VOICE: Yellow hair, Annie, and gentle ways. Loved
everybody. The angel whiteness of the grave on her from the
first. “How He took little children as lambs to His fold.” The
song.
THIRD VOICE: Your mother was dark, but this child was fair.
Your father’s own child. The one most like your father. Your
father’s own, then.
THEODOSIA: Oh, God, I believe, and there’s nothing to believe.
She thought again and again of the pond below the hill in the creek
bottom. The water would be fresh and sweet after the long winter rains
and it would stand high along the banks. In the morning someone would
find her body there, water-soaked, lying in the clean mud at the bottom
of the water, stones tied to her feet. It would be easy to go out the
door some night and never come back. Once she had gone out the door the
rest would be inevitable, the door having become the line between to go
and not to go. The front door seemed necessary, and she could not think
tenderly of the morning, of any morning, of the stones that would be tied
to her feet. All circumstances were set toward this departure. The days
of the week, distantly comprehended, did not differ, one from another;
Tuesday or Monday, Friday, all sank into a flat mass and were approached
without emotion. She felt her hand as it was folded into the other hand
and knew the feel of the bones and their bent articulations and the
texture of skin as felt by itself. Prophecy gathered vaguely about the
facts which were already well stated. One fact more remained as the act
of departure. She slept lightly, her sleep weighted by the act, burdened
by it.
A pleasant sense of Frank gathered in and out of her sleep, Frank
representative of something he was not, blended with the positive he
signified and become one with it. A warmth as of life crept over her,
memories that were symbols and dim anticipations. Half dreaming, her
body knew that it would be renewed by his presence, that her beauty
would be restored by his praise, that he would drape her scarf about her
shoulders and set her hair to the way he liked. “It’s pretty this way,
soft ripples in it,” a kind voice said, more kind than the voices of the
dialogues. Kind voices were speaking now, voices of praise, giving warm
life and the warm flow of blood through her members. The passage through
the door receded and flattened to a mere saying, a doctrine. The kindness
of Frank suffused her and the need of him ran over her. She knew clearly
then the strength of his body as it was warm with life, his hands full
of life-blood, his limbs rich with the throb of their joy. The odor of
life was about him, the strength of people, of places, of people talking
together.
* * * * *
A gentle rain had begun to fall and the snow of the day before would
melt. She had waded to the wood-lot through the running snow and had
brought in the last of the wood, six or eight pieces, piled now at the
side of her hearth. A winter light lay on the running leaves of gray and
silver and a winter apathy was settled deeply into the stilled vignettes
at the border, the woodpeckers knocking at the recurring tendrils that
spread about the faded roses. The day, Wednesday, seemed on tiptoe, aware
of itself. She could scarcely remember whether she had been down to her
aunt’s room for the noon meal or not. The light lying along the ceiling
seemed to be an afternoon light, but the drifting of the rain across the
air suggested morning. She tried to recall some detail of the descent
for the food which would make the memory of it differ from every other
descent. A picture of the old dog, Tilly, moving across the hearth near
the baking pones of bread and lying down heavily on the stones beyond
the hearth-rug came again and again. The dog had opened her mouth near
the hot pone but she had drawn away, closing her mouth slowly with a
yawn-spasm jerking her lower jaw, and just at that instant the clock on
the mantel had begun to strike some hour.
THIRD VOICE: She’s already dead, already dead. She died one
night. Anyhow they found her on the old rags down before the
fire, dead, in the room with five old crazy hounds. Found her
on the floor rolled up in a knot, dead where she’d been asleep.
Five insane old dogs, half-starved, in the room all night. She
died on the floor with the dogs.
SECOND VOICE: This house, it’s full of devils, full of demons,
full of devils.
THIRD VOICE: Her bed had not been slept in for months on end.
Dust on the pillows. Dead, she is, already.
THEODOSIA: She didn’t have to continue in life if she didn’t
want to. She didn’t have to sleep in the bed either. She could
sleep any way she wanted to. She didn’t have to sleep in some
regular way to prove she was alive.
SECOND VOICE: This house, it’s full of devils. [_Screaming._]
Full of demons.
THIRD VOICE: “See,” they said. “Look, look, she ate the dog
bread.” What else is there around? Between her teeth a crust of
the dog bread.
THEODOSIA: And very good bread it is. Don’t be too light with
the dog bread.
FIRST VOICE: The foul breath of an old fox-killing bitch on a
hot pone and a clock strikes. That’s what time is. There is
nothing comparable to it on any other planet. Nothing like it.
THIRD VOICE: You are a murderer yourself. You, Theodosia. And
an adulteress. Which of the commandments have you not broken?
THEODOSIA: I thought that was finished, settled. I thought I’d
put that by.
THIRD VOICE: What honor did you show your father? Why didn’t
you honor him as he wanted to be honored? Easy to know and
lived in the same house.
Time was measured then by the walking of a dog over a hearth, but the
day, Wednesday, stood apart from time as having some entity of its own,
some extra faculty. She saw innumerable dogs walking in procession across
a hearth, ticking time, yesterday and tomorrow, forever, as far back as
memory could reach. A warmth then began to drown her memory of Tilly and
she knew in some inner way that it was afternoon and that Frank would
come. A pleasant sense of Frank stole over her. He would talk a little
of his success in the courts and gossip of law secrets, wills, marriage
settlements, threatened procedures, giving comradeship. Perhaps he would
grow amorous, offering compliments. Through him she would touch the world
again. The vignettes on the border were fading with the waning day, the
birds being still, the sun set. She sat up in the bed suddenly, the act
a sudden cry to the departing light. Except for a few patches of lit
upland, the landscape was dark now, settling into the shadows where the
hills arose, biting at the sky with sullen lines along the west hill rim.
Weak from the strain of sitting up suddenly she sank into a momentary
apathy, but her breathing was one continuous burden borne by the prophecy
which was already clearly stated as fact. She arose from the bed as if
some determination had come to her. She felt herself moving slowly, but
with little forward rushes of settled opinion, going straight without
dalliance. She mended the fire without stint of the wood and dressed
herself in the first gown that came to her hand, the gray wool gown, and
took the scarf to her shoulders. Her hands trembled with exhaustion, but
she lit the lamp and carried it to the lower hall and set it on the table
there.
She went to her aunt’s room and lingered a little by the fire, taking a
farewell of her by a quiet lingering, a few commonplace speeches passing
between them, the old sayings of the months that were past. Of the two
ordeals that lay before her she regarded Frank as the more difficult, for
he and his disposal had not been predicted by prophecy or settled to an
act, he being rather a menace within her own body where it reached toward
life. The aunt settled to her book again, and Theodosia stood by the door
of the room, waiting and listening, and presently there was a noise at
the front door of the house. She went into the hall then, and, Old Mam
and Tilly following after her, she let them come or she laid her hand
on Old Mam’s neck to keep her at hand. Frank was coming into the hall,
was standing at the door looking cautiously back into the gloom of the
half-lit spaces beyond the stairs.
She held Old Mam by the collar and called to Tilly, keeping them near. At
the foot of the stairs she spoke to Frank across the ten feet that lay
between them and she moved backward toward the steps, mounting the first,
taking the dogs with her, holding them fast. He was arguing, outraged and
unbelieving, growing angry. “I hold no grudge against you,” she said.
She kept the dogs close to her, holding their collars. “I will never see
you again,” she said. “But I hold no grudge.” She had gone half-way up
the steps now, but the ascent was difficult, the dogs unwilling to come.
The dogs dragged her back; “They make it too hard,” she thought, half
yielding to their strength at the point where her own strength failed.
Frank was commanding, accusing, saying she had not been fair.
“Drive those devils away,” he shouted after her. “You drive those dogs
off. I’m here now. I’ve come.”
She was pushed by the great bodies of the dogs until she glided along
the wall, but she moved upward, and the dogs came with her, a part of
her ascending motion now. She took the dogs to her room and closed the
door. The tumult in her mind had increased, for Frank had brought a
newer quality of argument, of rational approach to himself. Pity for
Frank worked in her now. He had called after her, “I want to marry you,
Theodosia. That’s what I want now in life.” Frank was still below; the
front door was yet open; she knew this by the draught under her door that
sang a loud thin cry as the air rushed through the wide crevice and made
for the loosely fitted window. Trembling, knowing that Frank was below,
she began to hiss at Tilly, the more evil-tempered of the brutes, until
the dog growled and barked in great anger, until she ran to the window
and leaped again and again at the door. There was nothing left now but to
walk out at the door when the menace of Frank should depart. She hissed
up Tilly’s anger whenever it abated. She sat relaxed in her chair, her
muscles indifferent to their functions. Below-stairs other dogs were in
an uproar now, the whole house of dogs in a mad stir. She passed into the
remote barkings of the dogs, already as dead, indifferent to the air she
continued to suck in and out with her habitual breathing, indifferent to
the icy water of the pond where it would lay pain about her. Her hissing
was continuous with the anger of the dogs.
The crying of the draught under the door had ceased now, and the cold
had ceased to rush along the floor. Then it seemed that a long while
since she had heard the door below when it slammed and she heard the
motor start. She continued to hiss Tilly’s anger. Sitting indifferently
in her chair, relaxed in every fiber, she lived only where the hissing
breath came from her lips to stir the dogs. She had no relation to the
bed in which she had lain formerly and no need or thought or memory of
it, no possessive sense of it. The world became more and more dim as
the fire sank lower, the air colored with a pink afterglow, and the
dark crept nearer, a fact which she held somehow but to which she was
indifferent. Old Tilly barked fitfully now, or lay exhausted in a corner
of the room. She kept no relation to the fiddle as it lay on the table
beyond the hearth, beyond the reach of the firelight; it was a darkened
mass among the shadows of the table, holding a remote kindness for some
being far apart from herself, identical with some abstract goodness that
would never be stated. It gathered to a dim shadow that concentrated to
a dull point and receded through elastic space to infinite depths of
remoteness. She stared at the wall to the left of the fireplace, her
vision having no function. Only one fact held truth in the singleness of
prophecy. She saw herself leap from the chair suddenly and rush out at
the door; a sudden start and she would be gone. She stared at the wall;
the picture of her going, a felt picture, spread downward through her
limbs that lay relaxed now, ready for the sudden spasm of movement.
* * * * *
At once a vivid appearance entered her mind, so brilliant and powerful
that her consciousness was abashed. Larger than the world, more spacious
than the universe, the new apparition spread through her members and
tightened her hands so that they knotted suddenly together. It tightened
her spine until she sat erect. Her recognition settled to a word, groped
with words, settled again about a word, some word, catching at words with
a net. The word was vivid, was like a new flower in a sunny place, and
unable to say it she knew it with a rush of thanksgiving that out-ran all
her recognition of it. The word she could not say, could only approach
with reaching tentacles of memory and thought, erected a joy throughout
her senses. Her body spread widely and expanded to its former reach, and
the earth came back, herself acutely aware of it. A pleasure that she
still lived to participate in this recognition caught her throat with
a deep sob. She had shifted her gaze so that she looked now into the
fire. She sat leaned forward, tense with new life, with the new world,
and she penetrated the embers with her gaze and saw into the universe of
the fire, the firmament of dimly glowing heat that receded, worlds on
worlds, back into infinities, atoms, powers, all replete with their own
abundance. She laughed in her joy and went with the fire, more living
now than the coals in the heart of the red ash. The word let a happy
substitute stand for itself, a delegate appearing clearly defined, a
word experienced as a glow of pride in life and joy. “Tomorrow” was the
utterance, clearly placed then. On the next day the peddler would come
along the road. This homely, habitual fact had been the Arise-ye of her
resurrection. “I’m still alive,” she sang under her breath, “I’m alive,
I’m alive.” She leaned tensely near the hearth and spoke, or she smiled
without speaking. Her eyes were dim with the new birth and the bloom of
renascence slightly blurred her consciousness as yet. The loaned word
grew more vivid, “Tomorrow,” substituted now for the unsaid word that
receded, its mission accomplished. She leaned near the hearth.
Then she arose quickly and gathered her wraps and some clothing to a
chair. She shut her fiddle into its case and placed the music in a pile
beside it. Then she went below and hung a white cloth on the pillar of
the portico, for she thought that the peddler might pass early. In her
room again she found a piece of the coarse bread under her pillow and of
this she ate sitting wrapped in the blanket of the bed, the room being
cold now, the fire almost gone. Without undressing she lay in the bed,
ready for her departure, a gladness singing through her thin blood where
life still beat. Presently she was aware that it was morning and that she
had slept happily. She bathed in the cold water, shaking with cold and
joy, and she ate the last of the bread. When the peddler brought his car
along the driveway she took her things into her arms and went down to the
portico.
“I’d be plumb pleased to death,” he said when she asked her favor,
although she told him she would have to ask him to wait for his pay. “I
wouldn’t charge a young lady e’er a cent to ride along with me. Pay?
Don’t say e’er word about pay. Would I charge a young lady to go a-riden
with me? Sakes-alive!”
When he asked her where she wanted to go she had no answer ready, but
she was joyous in her evasions, making questions and replies that kept
the destination delicately poised at the brink of an answer. He would go
here and stop there, naming farms, and he could come to Spring Run Valley
by noon of the day, he said. Then he stopped at a farm, the house near
the roadway, and called his wares to the farmer’s wife, who bought. She
peered curiously at the front of the truck but she made no comment.
“Where did you say you aimed to go?” he asked when they were on the
road again, and she answered, “Spring Run Valley.” Then he told her of
the origin of the name, she having asked. “Spring Run is a creek that
rises in a spring off a way to the north there.” He told the news of
the countryside, of the dead, the sick, the new-born, the lucky. Along
the roadside men were clearing the ditches, shoveling out drains for
the roadway, and over the tops of the hills some crows were flying. The
winter had blown the last leaf from every bush and every vine and the
earth stood ready to be remade, the streams running cold under the little
bridges, the water quick and yellow. The truck ran swiftly, and there
were few sales made, for the people were busy with other matters, with
the plant beds, the hen-houses, the early gardening or fencing. They
would wave the liniment-man away with a greeting. “You know somebody in
Spring Valley?” he asked. She did not know what she would say to that,
and she waited for a reply to find its way to her mouth, her humor that
of a bird waiting for its song. She saw her strange happiness going its
unknown ways and she looked from afar, quaintly amused, as if place were
a humorous adjunct to being, for if one is happy in being alive he has
to have a place to be happy in. They could never take that away from
happiness in being. That control of places kept in the hands of men,
certain men, this seemed exquisitely droll.
“Miss Hettie, she up and married awhile back, took and married and went
off right in the middle of the school. They haven’t got a teacher yet to
the best of my belief and knowledge. Doc Bradley said to me they would
be right put-to to find one so late in the term.” Bradley was the school
trustee for the district, and the appointment of the teacher was his
duty, he said.
She was weary in body, aching from the long ride, and a vertigo seized
her now and then, induced by the unaccustomed motion of the truck and the
swift passage, but her pleasure ran still with the slipping countryside
as it opened before her and with the flocking of the crows as they made
off toward some farther hill. She had waited for her replies as a bird
might wait, but finally she made known her mission as it appeared to her.
She would ask to be allowed to teach the Spring Run Valley school for the
three months remaining. “So that’s were you’re bound for,” he said. “Well
I vum! They’ll be right glad to get you, that I know.” He would let her
down at Dr. Bradley’s house, he said. “I’m bound straight for that very
place.”
Then he took a package from his coat pocket and said that it was a snack
of lunch his wife always wrapped up for him, that he never could tell
where he would be for his dinner and she always tied him up a little
snack to be on the safe side.
“I’m a mind to eat it now, to get shed of it,” he said. “I’ll be in
Spring Valley to dinner, that I well see, and I always eat my dinner with
Doc Bradley when I pass. I’m a mind to eat the bite I got here now, and
maybe you’ll have a bite along with me, just to keep me company.”
He unrolled a paper from about the food and offered her one of the
sandwiches in his hands. Then the juices of her vitals leaped like hungry
serpents at the sight of the food and her hand reached for it, afraid
it might be withdrawn, her hand trembling. She took the food out of his
hand, her eyes smiling, her mind joyous, the serpent of her maw beating
with anticipation, reaching forward with craving, and she knew that
her way was strange as she took the bread into her hand, that even he,
unobserving and eager to talk, one of his hands on the steering-wheel
of the wagon, knew that her manner was biased, deflected from the ways
of women. In her fingers the food was seen to be pieces of well-baked
bread buttered richly, between the pieces bits of tender meat delicately
salted, the flesh of cattle made ready for food. At the first moment
a sickness arose as she swallowed, but she ate slowly, a rich repast,
two pieces of buttered bread and the meat. When she had fed she drowsed
slightly, and she let the morning spend itself as it would, let it run
past her unhindered, noted but unguided.
Some people were standing in an old doorway talking together, and they
shook their heads when the peddler called out to them, sufficient in
themselves, joyous over some departure, waving hands as two went down
a path. At a small gate beside a bridge a woman was driving a great
turkey-gobbler, guiding it skilfully into the small entry, and her
passing set a bright glow of color against the brown of the earth and the
faint yellow that lay over the bushes, her shawl dull blue plaided with
gray. Some children loitered at the side of the road making a seesaw of
a fallen board and two larger girls came idly down the road under the
lacery of stripped boughs, a renewed token that school did not keep. Her
joy lasted and the journey came to an end. The truck went slowly down the
village road between the small houses, scattering the hens from its path,
calling the men to the door of the blacksmith’s shop, curving its path to
the curving way.