1
The fields had dried at last, the plowing of her garden was done. She
had learned by now how to manage her work in the house so that she
had more hours for work in the sun; she held to her habit of rising
early, of getting out into the morning’s freshness. That day she had
been toiling with spade and rake at leveling the plowed furrows. Wanny
was sleeping late. After a while the height of the sun warned her that
he would soon be clamoring for breakfast. From the kitchen she heard
his voice, not calling, but murmuring as though he were dreaming. She
called gayly up the stairs:
“Get up, old Lazybones. See how quickly you can dress yourself! You’re
going to help mother in the garden today, you know.”
He did not come. Again she went to the foot of the stairs. “Wanny, old
Bunty’s chicks are out. Hurry up, hurry up!”
There was a wail, low, frightened. She ran up with the quick inward
panic that every mother knows how to cover with a smile. The child was
lying still, whimpering--Wanny, who never cried. She stood beside the
bed.
“But get up, Wanny. Quick--quick! Get up!”
“I can’t, Mums. Somebody’s taken my legs away.”
She tossed off the covers. For all her pleading, all the child’s
efforts, he could not move....
Weeks, months--how could she count the time that followed? “A sporadic
case,” Dr. Severance said, shaking his head. “We never know where it
will strike, nor when, nor why. In time, perhaps. But we can’t tell.”
She telephoned Alice, and in two days Alice’s car was there, and a
nurse. They carried the child to the city, to a hospital that was
said to do wonders for infantile paralysis cases. Wanny, like that, a
“case”.... There was Nicky, there were Alice and George, there was even
Ambrose, but they were like shadows, for all their reality to her. She
must have talked, eaten, slept, but the hours away from the hospital
were blanks, those spent by the child’s bedside sheer agony. Doctors
came. She thanked God for Alice’s money, and in a moment forgot the
thought of God and Alice and money. Nurses passed in and out of the
room, were kind, and cheerful, and very busy. She looked at them, spoke
to them, and forgot there were nurses. Mornings came at last, when she
might hasten to the hospital. Evenings were only times when Alice or
Nicky arrived and told her that she would have to go with them. When
George suggested calling a specialist from a western city, she eagerly
welcomed the suggestion. Pride? She had none. She would have crawled
in the street, abased herself forever, if by doing that she could have
given a quiver of life to those still limbs.
Yet after a while they said he was better. They called it that. There
was no “better” to Anne. The child had run and danced and fluttered in
and out of the sunshine like a butterfly, as free, as unconscious of
himself. What could “better” mean, when he was still crippled? Better,
because he could move one leg again? The other was useless. She knew;
in time even its rounded beauty would shrivel. They called that being
better. They said they could do no more for him than that. They said it
cheerfully, as though they were making a great gift.
“Alice,” she said, “I have got to go home.”
All the long way in Alice’s car she thought of that. Home. She
thought of it like that. Not a place, this time, to hide herself in.
Not a place to wait in, ashamed and sore and bitter. Home. Ah, life
was treacherous! It sneaked upon you, jumped at you from around the
corners. The squirrel-cage, round and round. Safest, within the bars.
That was it. One was safest within the bars.
She found her garden planted and cared for, the rows already green
with vegetables in leaf. Peonies flaunted in the border. The house had
been cleaned. Windows were open to the summer air. A fire was laid in
the kitchen stove ready for lighting. On the table a loaf of bread was
wrapped in a mended napkin. Before supper was ready the Beaman twins
came with a tiny kitten for Wanny. Later, Dr. Severance looked in.
“They’ve done well for him,” he said, when he had examined the boy.
“Better than I could. I’ll keep an eye on you both.”
The next morning Mrs. Wells came. Dorilliam had brought milk that
morning, saying, “Ma says you needn’t bother about paying anything for
the milk for a while. The cow’s fresh, and we just give it to the pigs.”
His mother looked at Warren, sitting outside, so still in the sun, the
kitten in his lap. “I know how you must be feelin’,” said she. “But
there’s one thing. You got him. It’d be worse, if he had been took.”
Anne said nothing. It was true that she had him. More than ever she had
him now, held in her heart with a passion of protectiveness, a passion
surpassing anything she had known while he was active and well.
“I know how ’tis,” said Dorilliam’s mother, “because I lost one. The
fifth, it was, and we were real poor that winter, and folks said ’twas
just as well he was taken. We knew they said it. We got seven in all,
now, good boys, every one of them. But there’s always the one we lost.
We don’t talk much about it. Don’t have to. Pa, he ain’t the talkin’
kind. Maybe I’m not, either. But I guess we both know.”
Anne was looking at her: had she ever seen her before, that squat,
homely woman, the drudge, the--unthinking?
“Every spring pa goes up to the buryin’ ground with a rake and clears
off. There’s a bush there, sweet brier, I planted. No, we don’t say
much. But there’s always the one we lost. The others are good boys,
every one of them. I know that other was spared a lot. But--well, we
lost him.”
Another came, a slim, spare spinster who lived and worked hard in her
brother’s house. Anne knew her by the name all the neighborhood called
her, Miss Abby. She had spoken to her often before, been a little
amused at the way the type exemplified itself in her, prim, dried, with
eyes that saw everything and lips that pursed themselves as though to
keep back those comments that were best unspoken, at any rate when one
lived in one’s brother’s house and was thankful enough for a home.
“I just thought I’d run over,” said she. “Wondered if maybe there
wasn’t some sewing I could do for you, evenin’s. I got plenty of time
on my hands, evenin’s.”
As she was going, she hesitated in the doorway, looked up at Anne. “You
got a real nice home here,” she said. “A child of your own’s a good bit
of comp’ny.”
Mrs. Ware came, both arms full of shining glass jars. “My canned
peaches,” she told Anne with pride, “and some jell. I want you should
taste them.”
Anne thanked her and smiled. “A generous taste, Mrs. Ware,” said she.
“They look wonderful.”
“There’s more where those come from. You won’t get much time for
canning this year.”
Anne had thought her a silent woman, hard, intent on her business of
feeding a family. Mr. Ware had a large farm, kept four “hands” in
summer. But this day whatever impediment usually sealed Mrs. Ware’s
lips was removed for the moment. She gave Anne a shy look.
“Our eldest girl, now. She had what Wanny’s got. I guess ’twas that.
An’ it went to her head. They said if she lived she’d never be--right.
Oh, I’m so thankful your boy’s--all right!”
Impulsively, Anne kissed her.
And still others came. Some made no comment on Warren, some offered a
bit of old-fashioned advice, brought a remedy, or a tonic for Anne,
or some other small gift. Most came quite simply to visit. Anne
understood, after a time. They were accepting her as one of themselves,
a woman living through the lot that is woman’s. They were standing by,
spiritually shoulder to shoulder.
Frequently Kent came, always with something for the child. One day
he arrived with a large bulging parcel under his arm, Jenny giggling
behind him.
“I don’t know what to do with this girl,” said he. “She says she won’t
live with us any longer. Wants to come here to live with you and Wanny!”
Jenny laughed and nodded.
“She’s an independent young person, is Jenny. You see, she can board
where she likes. She has friends, who pay the large sum of four dollars
a week so that Jenny may eat. And she does eat. My word, how Jenny does
eat! Now’s she tired of our food, and wants to try yours. What do you
say, Mrs. Denison?”
Anne flushed. She saw through the simple ruse. “Ah, Rufus----”
“But say, lookit, honest, Mis’ Denison, there’s a heap I can do. I’m
fourteen now, goin’ on fifteen. And he’s jokin’ about all I eat.
There’s a heap I can do and I’d just love to look after Wanny.”
Jenny stayed. Said Rufus, “No use getting morbid, my friend. And you
will be that, if you keep yourself shut up here alone with the child.”
Anne held out her hand. “You’re a good friend,” she said, and instantly
there came into her mind another time when she had used those same
words to another man. To Ranney Copeland. “A good friend.”
So there were days when Anne could get out, days when she walked with
Kent over the roads and hills, or went to his garden for tea, or
listened to his music.
“People will talk,” she told him one day when he was proposing a long
tramp. But Kent shook his head.
“I think not,” he said. “It’s an odd thing, that, in these country
people. They do gossip. No doubt of that. But there’s a deep
understanding about them, too. And a loyalty. No, I don’t think they
will talk.”
A bit farther on he looked down at her. “Anne, would you mind, if they
did? If they ‘talked’?”
She considered. “I think I should. Not in the same way I once might
have minded. Indeed, there was a time when I dared that, and more,
without caring. But now I should care. Because I want them to like me.”
Kent smiled, as though his question were answered.
Anne’s heart was continuously wrung when she watched Warren moving
about, learning to use his crutch, contriving queer little ways to
achieve what he used to at a bound; but with a child’s ready acceptance
of circumstances he seemed before long to be unaware of the impediment.
The girl Jenny helped him. She herself had been crippled for years. To
her there was nothing strange about being impeded as Wanny was. You
just got along. Jenny, too, was proving herself increasingly useful,
and as always, when her hands had but little to do, Anne’s mind was
active.
2
Once or twice during old Willy’s life Anne had gone with her to the
white-spired church down the road. Once or twice had been enough.
But now she began to think of it again. It was never open except on
Sunday. It was bare, colorless, uncomfortable. The form of service
was unlike anything she had ever seen before, unfamiliar hymns droned
out to the accompaniment of an ornate walnut melodeon set casually
across a corner, readings in which minister and people took part,
though Anne could never find them in the book until they were half
over; long prayers that seemed to her to be filled with banalities and
unwarrantable personalities; a wooden box on the end of a short pole
thrust along the pews, and a sermon to follow. Nothing there for her.
Yet the neighbors went continually. Or it may have been faithfully, as
though it meant something to them. Perhaps they did get something from
it.
One Sunday she left Warren with Jenny, dressed herself in her
six-year-old best, and walked up the road as the bell was ringing. It
was just as she had remembered it. Not a head turned when Anne went
into the church, although she knew that everyone there was aware of
her. No one came forward to show her where to sit. She understood. They
thought of her as quite naturally taking her place as one of them. The
day was cool. A fire had been lighted in the corrugated cast-iron stove
at the back. The place had become over-heated, and through the open
windows flies swarmed in, swirling and buzzing in the heavy air. Again
those hymns in unison, except when some adventurous soul attempted
an alto or tenor that did nothing to enhance the harmony. Again the
long prayers with men sitting stolid and women with hands to their
foreheads. Again the sermon. Anne knew the minister. She had seen
him many a morning leading his cow to pasture or working his garden,
and sometimes in the afternoons passing her house on his way to some
parochial visit, dressed in ministerial garb of long black-skirted
coat that flapped oddly about his bent legs. Someone had told her that
he had been a blacksmith in his youth. He preached earnestly, with
strange, frequently repeated gestures, awkward, his voice thundering
phrases he had caught from the newspapers. “And he smote them hip and
thigh with a great slaughter, and he went down and dwelt in the top of
the rock Etam,” his text was. He shrieked out the words over and over;
“they” should be smitten hip and thigh, their slaughter punished with
greater slaughter. He was vague enough about the rock Etam, vague as to
who should be smitten or why, yet he repeated the phrase over and over.
His earnestness was grotesque, pitiable. He jumped up and down like a
masquerading child in a futile rage. But Mrs. Wells sat placid, there
was a smile on Deacon Bassett’s face, as he occasionally nodded his
head; men and women who got up before dawn to make their days longer
sat there and listened, or sat there decorously at least.
At last the service was over. Anne was for slipping away unobserved,
but found her way blocked by the welcoming hand of Deacon Bassett. Mrs.
Wells stopped her in the aisle.
On the road she was joined by the small, spare spinster who had been
to see her more than once since her return from the city with Wanny.
Miss Abby’s manner of speaking oddly matched her manner of walking. Her
steps were short, quick, determined.
“I see you come to it, too,” said she. “Like me. Time was when I didn’t
go to meetin’, either.”
Anne felt that she must say something. “The sermon was--” she faltered,
unable to find appropriate words, groping for something she could say,
something one of the flock would be glad to hear about that sermon.
“Oh, I know all about the sermon,” Miss Abby supplied, dryly. “You
don’t need to say anything about the sermon. If folks went to church
to hear the sermon, they’d stay to home. That’s what I used to do. But
now I go. Regular.”
Still Anne said nothing. She had long since discovered that silence was
not only permissible among these direct country folk, but often the
surest means of getting them to talk.
“I guess maybe it’s the same way with you as ’twas with me,” said Miss
Abby. “I go because it’s like keepin’ step.”
“Keeping step?”
“Yes. Ever try walkin’ along with a body and takin’ your own way while
she keeps hers? Tires you out. Keepin’ step’s dif’rent. You can go
quite a ways without gettin’ all ragged out, if you keep in step.”
“That is true,” Anne said.
Miss Abby nodded. “Yes. It’s what lots of folks go to church for,
I guess. I’ve heard ’em say they go there to pray. But ’tain’t so.
Not with a lot of ’em, anyway. Not with me. I could say my prayers
anywhere, just as well as in church. Better, some places. But I used to
rebel. Against quite a good deal. Now I don’t. Not so much, anyway. Now
I keep step. It’s easier to.”
These people in Heathville had their tragedies, large and small. They
worked, they bore children and suffered. They were poor. For so long
she had believed them submissive, or dulled to acceptance of an empty
daily routine. Now she was beginning to see that they must have had
their inner struggles, their questionings. Miss Abby “used to rebel,”
old Willy had wanted her freedom. All humanity falters and stumbles,
catches itself, goes on; drops in the ranks, recovers, gets up again
and struggles on, keeps step, or tries to. Was the power of going on,
of enduring, of finding a basis of living, of avoiding the bruised
knees and stubbed toes, only to be found through keeping step? That
little Miss Abby had no place in the world, merely filled a niche in
her brother’s household that could have been filled as well by any
other member of the family, or need not have been filled at all. She
was negligible. Yet even she had had her puny rebellions. As Willy had
wanted to be free, so had Miss Abby wanted to set her own pace. Perhaps
she had even had hopes and ambitions, all coming at last to trying to
keep in step, to keep along. Because it was easier. Easier, or the only
working basis to be found. No use rebelling, trying, struggling. Anne’s
thoughts brought her back again to the question of ambition.
“To succeed in one’s soul, ambition must become longing.” What had she
ever longed for? Warren’s activity back again, yes. But concerning
herself, the intimate self that was.... What was that intimate self?
She had never thought much about her soul. Things, money, position,
gayety, power--those she had wanted, wanted terribly. There was a point
to wanting, a reason for it, in that sense. The aim of it was definite.
But what was longing? As senseless as Miss Abby’s keeping step: it got
you nowhere. Yet there was something, there was something. People lived
on, found a means of living on, found something that lifted life above
existence. What was it, where was it? She had not failed, not weakened
nor faltered in the struggle, yet she was stranded, groping for she
knew not what, her soul crying out for help. And there was no answer.
Disaster had come to her, motherhood, poverty, work, the last blow
struck through the heart of her heart: she was still herself, still
Anne Denison. Personality remained, persisting, surviving through it
all. Looking back on her life with Brice, she could not see where she
had failed. She had been well-intentioned. There had even been love
between herself and Brice. At this distance, after these years, she
wondered what had become of that love. It was like her anger, burned
out.
Strange, what had brought on the disaster between him and herself. That
fusillade of anger on their last night--she could see it as terrible,
now, in its suddenness, in the way it had burst out with all the
devastating force of the unforeseen. She had read of bomb outrages,
where some moronic miscreant lays a hideous thing with a fuse in the
way of innocent people. Then, explosion and death, or life maimed
forever. Something like that was the moment of uncontrolled fury on
her part and Brice’s, that moment that maimed life and killed love for
them. There must have been a fuse, must have been some small, furtive
thing, futile perhaps in itself, yet vicious enough at last to have
caused that explosion. What was it that had burned its way into her
nerves and brain, into Brice’s? Right things did not explode. Right
things were orderly, like life and growth, spring and summer. How far
from right, how far from clean orderliness must she and Brice have
gotten for disaster so complete to have overtaken them? She had blamed
Brice, blamed life and circumstance, denied blame on her own part. She
had fallen back on her pride, endured pain, submitted to poverty and
given herself to toil. But now she wanted something more. Not help, not
rescue. She wanted to probe until a meaning might be found, or if not a
meaning, truth.
“You’re not looking as well as you might,” Dr. Severance said. “Too
shut up, here. Come drive around with me.”
She went with him, many times. They were long drives, into the by-ways
of the hills.
“How do you manage to get around to these far-away people?” Anne asked
him.
“I don’t. Not as a doctor should. Of course I do the best I can, but
they have to wait--disastrously, many times.”
“It seems to me they have to wait for everything. And so little comes
after all the waiting.”
“Oh, they’re sure of birth and death. That’s about as much as any of us
are sure of,” said he.
“What holds them to it?” Anne asked. “Just that they can’t get away?”
“No,” said the doctor. “Sometimes habit, lack of initiative. Some are
satisfied. Some are too timid to run out of their burrows.”
“Is there no joy? Is there nothing that carries them along with it?”
“Ask them,” the doctor said. “They’ll always talk about themselves.”
They stopped at a house where a man sat on the steps, heavy,
black-bearded, with small black eyes gleaming steadily beneath his
shaggy eyebrows with the sinister watchfulness of a serpent’s. The
doctor went into the house and Anne spoke to the man, using the
invariable introduction of the country, a remark on the weather. He did
not get up, but replied affably enough. Then she said:
“I’m sorry your wife is sick.”
“She wouldn’t have to be, if she’d take the kind o’ medicine I do.
Reg’lar heart-pills, they be. But the woman, she wants the doctor all
the time. Still and all,” with a brief sly look upward and a fleeting
grin, “he’s cheaper. He don’t charge northin.’”
Anne said nothing else, looked about her. There were blossoming
petunias trained against the house on strings, a lanky begonia in a can
set on a window-sill.
“What are ‘reg’lar heart-pills’?” she asked, as they drove away.
The doctor smiled. “Strychnine, mostly. He used to take grain alcohol.
Now it’s hard cider. When that’s gone, he tramps six miles down to the
village and buys ‘reg’lar heart-pills.’ Spends all his wages that way.”
“And the woman?”
“Cancer.”
She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “What have they?”
“God knows,” said the doctor.
But another day Anne went into the house. “I brought you up some
tomatoes,” she said. “There are more in my garden than I could use.”
The woman smiled. “I ain’t seen any this year. The man don’t like ’em.
He don’t like any vegetables much, excepting potatoes and maybe a mess
o’ dandelions, so we don’t grow ’em.”
“No, of course not. No use cooking for one,” Anne said.
“No. That’s what worries me, layin’ here like this. What’ll he do for
pie, after I’m gone? He’s set on havin’ his pie. He ain’t much of a
hand at doing for himself.”
Another day they stopped at a house where a baby was wailing, its
mother, a girl who looked like a child, holding it in her lap like a
doll, swinging the while in a ragged hammock. An older woman came to
the door when the car stopped, but went hurriedly in when she saw Anne.
“Well, Elsie,” the doctor called out, cheerily, “how’s the future
President?”
The girl came forward, smiling. When she saw a stranger in the doctor’s
car she stopped short and the smile faded.
“You come here and show off that baby,” the doctor said. The girl came
shyly, and Anne held out her arms.
“Oh, let me hold him a minute,” she said.
The girl gave up the child, and flushed.
“I tell Elsie,” Dr. Severance said, “that there’s nothing in all this
world as wonderful as being a mother.”
“Except the baby itself. That’s more wonderful. Isn’t it?” she asked.
The girl nodded, and took the child back, and held it to her breast.
“Yes, that was the girl’s mother who dodged when she saw us,” said the
doctor as he started the car again. “She’s ashamed. Nothing like that
ever happened in her family before, you see. Elsie’s not married.” A
few hundred yards from the house they passed a stalwart lad who waved
to the doctor. Anne, turning to watch him, saw the girl running along
the road to meet him.
“Floyd Travers? Yes, he’s a fine lad,” Dr. Severance said. “His father
has a big dairy farm. He’s going to marry Elsie.”
“That clean-looking boy? Was he----?”
“No. But he says he’s not going to have her live where folks are
ashamed of her. He’s building a house. They’ll be married when it’s
done.”
3
Kent was looking worn in those days. Paula, Anne knew, kept much to her
room. She wondered what must go on in that house. To herself Kent was
always the welcoming friend. Once or twice when she was there Paula
came in, sat beside her, held her hand, then whispered something about
her baby, and drifted out again like a pale wraith of womanhood. One
day Anne was sitting before the fire while the early dusk crept in.
Kent was playing, but presently the music ceased. Kent crossed the room
to drop wearily into a chair by the hearth.
“Tired, Rufus?” Anne asked.
He ran a hand wearily up over his forehead. “Oh, out of tune, Anne, out
of tune.”
“Ah, life is all discord. That is the trouble.”
He sat forward, some faint color returning to his face. “Thank you for
saying that, because it gives me back some of my fighting edge. It’s
not discord, Anne. Don’t you believe it.”
“Tuneless, then.”
“Oh, if it’s tunes you want--! But harmony, rhythm. That is what
counts. You get into the rhythm, and you’re fixed. Get into it, drift
into it, fight into it, but get there. That’s God.”
He was leaning forward with his clasped hands dropped between his
knees, looking into the fire. Suddenly Anne felt his eyes on hers.
“Look here, Anne, I’m going to tell you something. There is a woman I
have loved for years as a thirsty beast loves a spring. As a blind man
loves the light. I was parched and blind before I knew her.”
“Rufus----”
“Don’t say that as if you were sorry. You don’t know. Listen. I want to
tell you. There’s Paula. Like that for two months before our child was
born. They said her mind would come back. It never did. The child was
dead, but it wasn’t that. Heredity, and the illness before.
“I had met Rose before Paula’s illness. Somehow, afterwards--well, you
don’t know how those things come. It was there, between us, shared
by us. We both knew. It came to us like a bolt, our knowing. Even
with Paula like that, I was willing to do anything--oh, dear God!
willing--such a word, for what that thirst was. That thirst. Rose
would have dared, faced the world and dared. She wasn’t afraid. It
wasn’t fear that held her back. No, not back, above. She saw something
beyond. It seemed to me that to be with her, to possess her and be
possessed, would be to have found the summit, to stand on it, the world
underneath. But she wanted more than that. Something finer. She could
forego things of the body, to make sure of possessing things of the
soul. She made me see. It wasn’t easy. But she made me see. One is
carried along by something, once one has it. Something above discord.
Something that solves discord. Harmony. Rhythm. I can’t say it any
better.”
“But if one doesn’t consciously have it or feel it? If one doesn’t find
it?”
“No matter. Oh, I’m not saying that it can’t be found, or had. One
stumbles, and finds the firm earth. Or to say it more clearly, one
stumbles into a current that bears him up, carries him along. I don’t
know what it is. I don’t care what you call it. I do know it’s there.
Here. A thing to grasp and to let one’s self drift upon, both. A thing
you’ve got to get hold of if you’re going to get hold of life, not
merely live. Faith’s the core of it. Not merely believing in anything,
exactly. It may be that, too. I don’t know. Faith. There’s no other
word I can think of. It’s as good as another, if you don’t try to pin
it down to belief in a ritual. That’s all right, too, I dare say. If
one needs it. What I mean is a getting in touch, through what’s in us
all. The spirit, maybe you’d call it. Anyway, faith. When you say that,
you’re bound to think, ‘Faith--in--God.’ That’s in our blood, in our
bones. It’s not fetishism. May have been once, when our skulls were
shaped differently. But I doubt it. Because we are animals. Breath of
life’s in us. Even a dog longs for the active peace of surrender to
something that’s stronger and greater than he is. Put a dog on a chain,
in a kennel, force him to surrender to something he knows is less
powerful, less fine than himself, and what do you see? Humiliation.
Degradation, conscious degradation. Same with man. We’ve got to stand
up, decently, cleanly, and answer to something that’s bigger than we
are. Better than we are. Why not God? All right. Then what’s next?”
“I’ve been wondering----!”
“Yes. One does wonder. Rose made me see that our own little personal
wonder and doubt is too insignificant to matter, once one has touched
faith. I could see nothing active in the idea. I wasn’t willing to
hymn-sing. Well--it was she who sent those children down here to me.
I didn’t want them here. They were a nuisance. She laughed. She does,
when she’s very serious. ‘You need them, you know,’ she told me. ‘You
are looking for something, and you have not found it. You look with
your mind.’ I didn’t know what she meant. ‘Force what you’re reaching
for into that child, and see what will happen,’ she said. ‘But if I
don’t know--?’ I asked her. She laughed again. ‘What is it you want to
know? How to go on? What to go on with? What can be found that will
carry you on? A hand in the dark? There is something. Tell the child
so!’”
“If one knew what it is,” Anne murmured.
“Precisely. I didn’t. One day I was watching the little beggar fumbling
about with his crutch. ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘why don’t you leave that
thing alone? Why don’t you forget about it? You can.’ I was as startled
as he was, but after I’d said it I couldn’t see why not. So I kept
telling him that he was not really paralyzed, that he could walk. And
one day he did.”
Anne’s hand went to her cheek. Her lips parted. Kent nodded. “I know.
But that’s truth. I saw it. The kid walked. Just as others have done.
Just as Jenny did. Startling? I was blinded, at first. Fairly stunned.
Then I got hold of it. I got the thing with conviction. Something had
happened to that youngster, and he had walked. Some energy had been
released. Or else he had touched it, taken it into himself. Well, then,
if he could, why not others? To walk, having been paralyzed--what,
after all, was that? People went on, lived,--lived, I say!--with worse
things to endure than lame legs. What does it? What keeps the world
going, anyway? Is it all automatic, something that, started, has to go
on and on? Hear a bird sing, look at the stars, and you know it’s not
that. All right, then--God. Purpose. Has to be. There’s nothing else.
And how had that kid come in touch with it? He had believed what I told
him over and over. Something inside of him had accepted the truth of
it, even though I did not. His poor little faith touched the spark.
That purpose. That rightness.”
They were silent a while. Presently Anne said: “You turned on the spark
in the doctor’s car, that day.”
He tossed his head back. “The doctor! He speaks of my faith cures.
I have nothing to do with it. He uses the same faith over and over
every day. Grins at an old chap and gives him a pill. Puts his hand on
somebody’s pulse and tells him it’s all right. And they’re better. I
tell you, there’s some basic energy. God--faith--love--eternal purpose.
Something that we can make use of, take into ourselves. Something that
carries us on.”
“You spoke of rightness.... But, Rufus, there are things like my boy,
like Paula.”
He brushed the hair from his forehead. “Oh, I know. And many another
thing that’s called tragedy. But after all, isn’t tragedy a thing
of the soul, Anne? If one finds God, as I mean God--gets in touch,
somehow, with purpose that’s energy, so that one can live along with
his tragedy, it’s never quite that. There’s something besides. Physical
things are so little, so easily hurt, bruised, crushed. What do they
matter!”
Anne got to her feet, flung out her arms. “They do matter! One has
them.”
Abruptly his exalted mood left him. “They do. God--I know that. I
falter. Everyone does. But I’ve found out that the only way to rectify
our troubles and weaknesses and failures is to reach out for something
that will harmonize them all.”
“To reach out--! But who has ever found?”
“I’m not saying one may arrive at the absolute. But I know I’ve
glimpsed it.”
“But what can harmonize failure, Rufus, and suffering and all our human
disasters?”
“What else could do it but having a sense of being part of the whole, a
consciousness that the whole is part of us? Could earth endure winter,
if there were no spring to come? Wouldn’t all mankind want to commit
suicide, if there were not the sure knowledge that others are to come
after us? Could I be an individual, if I were not part of the whole?
Can you think of a purposeless whole? No. One cannot conceive of chaos.
Any more than of ether, or the radiations of unseen stars. Then if
there is, is a purposeful whole, there’s some purpose sweeping through
it and carrying it along. Rhythm, or God. That’s the harmony, and the
harmonizing motivation, too.”
“If that is so, if it’s there waiting for us anyway, the rhythm, the
harmony, what need of faith?”
“Melody sleeps in the mute strings, doesn’t it? There must be the
hand on the bow, to make the strings speak. An engine with steam up
may be pulsing and waiting, but for all purposes it’s only a hideous
contrivance of steel and iron until a hand on the lever releases it to
life.”
Anne sat down again. She was looking into distant things, dim things,
in which others were forming. “A hand on the lever.... Do you really
believe that if one does find that faith, or purpose, whatever you mean
by God, one really can use it, put it to personal use, put it to work?”
“Faith, as I mean it, is force, that part of harmony and strength and
rightness that can be drawn by man into himself. Faith, as force, can
be acquired, can be developed, can be used. Possessing it in that
sense, man steps into his place again as a working part of the whole
order of rightness. Of purpose.”
“Rightness. Oh, what, anyway, is good, or goodness? You admitted that
one never can touch the absolute.”
“Dear girl, you’re muddling things. Humanity is never absolute. We are
always moving, always forming. Of course I don’t know what goodness
is. If it’s anything at all, it ought to be one thing for you and
maybe another for me. But good--I do know what good is! What could
it be, but a conscious activity wherein all our conflicts and all
our bewilderments, all our entangling habits and preconceptions and
failures, and what you called our disasters, emerge into some working
order?”
“That could never be.”
“Doesn’t it have to be, if we’re going on, catching the rhythm and
carried with it and by it?”
“By faith, just by faith? Oh, Rufus!”
“Yes. God--faith--love. Why be afraid of the words?” He stood up,
stretched his arms, laughed. “Oh, I know we’re all confoundedly afraid
of words. They’ve had all sorts of meanings piled on to them during
the ages, got themselves entangled with the very inconsistencies that
made them necessary. They began as definitions, and they’ve become
equivocations. So we’re afraid of them. But there were primitive needs
that gave rise to them, Anne, and there are primitive things, eternal
things, still in them, working out through them. Think it out.”
4
On a morning later in spring Miss Abby overtook her again on the road
and gave her a bunch of arbutus.
“I’m always the first one around here to find any,” she said. “Ain’t
they pretty? Seems queer, how they get to smell like that, growin’ out
of the mold the way they do.”
But before the arbutus faded the neighborhood was shaken by a tragedy.
Dorilliam came hammering on the door one morning before Warren and
Jenny were awake.
“Deacon Bassett’s hung hisself in the barn,” he cried, and ran to
spread his news farther.
Anne found a cloak, remembered to close the draft of the stove, ran
up the muddy road. About the barn a group of men clustered, standing
awkwardly, apparently waiting for something further to happen. Inside
the house Mrs. Bassett was sitting very straight in a rocking-chair,
tight-lipped and silent. Other women were in the room, busying
themselves about the things Mrs. Bassett must ordinarily have done.
They gave Anne significant looks, and one by one went away. Mrs.
Bassett might have been an image of stone, except for the rise and fall
of her breast; but suddenly she spoke.
“I kept waiting and waiting,” she said. “For things to get better. And
now it’s come to this. He ain’t ever spoke to me, not for more’n twenty
years, any more’n he could help. I ain’t ever had a dollar o’ my own
to spend. The children, they left home as soon as they could. I never
blamed ’em. Now one of ’em’s dead. The other one’s out in California.
He hasn’t wrote for over a year. I kept waiting and waiting. And now
it’s come to this. And the house is mortgaged.”
For twenty years ... and it had come to that. Anne went away sick at
heart. She met Kent, coming along the road.
“Rufus,” she asked, waving a hand towards the place where the men still
lingered, “what do you make of things like that?”
He was pale. He shook his head slowly. “I know, Anne, I know. There’s
not much to say. Except--‘Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief.’”
She went on to her own house. The children were awake, their voices
coming down to the kitchen. Outside a bluebird called. On the back of
the stove the kettle was humming.
That evening she could neither sew nor read. When her work was done she
sat with her hands in her lap. The children were busy at the table with
scissors and paste and bits of colored paper, but the meaning of their
chatter scarcely penetrated to her consciousness.
“Say, now you listen to me, Wanny Denison,” Jenny warned for the third
time. “If you drop the scissors again you’ll get down and pick ’em up
yourself.”
“I can’t,” Wanny replied, serenely. “My crutch won’t bend.”
“You don’t have to use your old crutch, anyway,” said Jenny. “I don’t
use mine any more.”
“That’s silly,” said Warren. “Cause I do have to.”
“No, you don’t, either. It’s fun, trying to go without it. And you can,
if you try.”
“You’re a girl,” Warren said, nonchalantly.
Jenny sat back and stared at him. “Well, of course I’m a girl. What’s
that got to do with it?”
“Girls can’t tell the truth if they try to. That’s what D’rilliam says.”
Jenny blazed. “D’rilliam’s a liar!” said she.
“Ho! Mums, Mums, look at me, look at me! Did you hear Jenny swear,
Mums? She swore.”
“I didn’t, either, Mis’ Denison! Honest, I didn’t!”
“No,” Anne agreed, “I don’t think you swore, Jenny. What were you
trying to tell Warren?”
“He don’t have to use his crutch, Mis’ Denison. Honest, he don’t. He
just won’t believe it.”
“Why won’t you, Wanny?” Warren stared at her. “You believe so many
things. Why not that?”
“I do have to use it. That’s why. I’d fall down without it.”
In the morning Anne was startled out of her thoughts of breakfast by
howls from upstairs. She ran up, to discover the boy sitting on the
side of the bed and pommeling Jenny.
“You go ’way. You go ’way,” he was yelling. “You let me alone. You go
’way.”
“Gee, Mis’ Denison. I dunno what’s got into him,” the bewildered Jenny
exclaimed. “I got him half dressed, and the minute my back was turned
he set up a-howling and yelling. He fell on the floor.”
“Warren! Stop that, stop fighting, stop crying! What is the matter with
you?”
“I hate you,” cried Wanny. “Jenny’s a liar and you are a liar. I hate
you!”
“Who’s swearing now?” put in Jenny.
“She said I didn’t have to use any crutch. You said to believe it. And
I fell down. I hate you.”
“Very well, go on hating me,” said Anne. “Go on crying. And fall down
again.”
“D--don’t you care?”
“Of course I care. So does Jenny. But we both think you’re a very
silly boy. Once Jenny couldn’t walk without a crutch----”
“Two of ’em!” from Jenny.
“Two of them. Mr. Kent told her to make-believe she could walk without
any. After a time she could. So of course Jenny thinks you are silly
not to make-believe, too. And of course I think you’re silly. If I had
to use a crutch, I’d think about it hard, hard, hard, until I didn’t
have to use it any more. Until I could walk and run and climb trees and
maybe drive a hay-wagon the way Dorilliam does. But of course it’s your
own affair.”
“I don’t believe you could climb trees, anyway,” said Warren. “And I
fell down. I should think you’d be sorry I fell down.”
“I’m sorry you’re silly,” said Anne, and with a look bade Jenny follow
her downstairs. “Let him think it over a while,” she said, and Jenny
grinned and went out to the hens.
Spring was by then well on the way. Again the year had rounded through
sleep to waking. One morning she stood at her window and watched the
sun gild the western hills. She looked at her boy, still sleeping, one
arm thrown up over his pillow. In the next room was Jenny; she would
help Warren dress, give him his breakfast. That new world out of doors
was calling irresistibly.
Along the road for a way, then into the pastures she went. There were
no cattle there now; they had not yet been turned out for summer. But
there was other life enough; wet grass, sweet and cool; birds singing,
robins and bluebirds; far off, crows flying and calling. Many times
during the years she had gone back to that hilltop where the old maple
grew. No shadow there, now. Red buds on the boughs, bluets under her
hand. As the sun rose it drew mist from the earth, smoke before an
altar or a veil before the face of a bride. Everything softened, dark
woods and white birch stems, hills and fields. Those fields--year after
year she had watched them, dark and tired in autumn, gleaming with snow
during winter, in summer lying in patterns of man’s contriving. As now,
through the mist, coming to life, stirring, teeming, holding within
themselves germs of things to come. Ordered, harmonious sequence.
What was that Kent said? Harmony a thing that solves discord. That
was it--life, so full of discord, but nature’s on-working purpose the
solvent. Life ... Mrs. Bassett. That girl with the baby. Dorilliam’s
mother, and her baby that had died, the grave that Mr. Wells tended.
Herself and Brice. Life, something that carried them all along, through
their stress, their mistakes, their sorrows and bleaknesses, as surely
returning, revolving, working and working and pulsing as the life under
those fields, the life rising now in the maple. Impelling purpose,
the fall of the seasons, their rise again. In the end some amalgam,
something that made of the broken parts a whole. Man’s part to nature,
and nature’s to man; interlocked service, and, later, fruition.
Slowly she went down the hill, crossed the wet fields to the house.
She stopped at the hen-house to investigate a nest where some chicks
were due to hatch that day. In the garden she stooped to release some
daffodils from a mass of wet leaves that were weighting them away from
the sun. Jenny came to the kitchen door and called, frantically waving
a dish-towel.
“Hurry up, Mis’ Denison! I got something to show yer.”
Anne went in, smiling. Warren was standing without his crutch, both
feet on the floor. He was holding on to the edge of the table.
“It ain’t nothing to do,” said he. “I can do it any old time, if I want
to.”
Anne felt dizzy, but she crossed the room calmly, went to the sink and
pumped a cool draft of water. “Of course you can do it,” she said.
“Before long you will probably be walking better than you talk.”
“D’rilliam says ‘ain’t,’” said young Warren, grinning. “I say it, too.”
“I’ll make you a custard for dinner,” said Anne. “Jenny, won’t you be
late for school?”
5
June passed to midsummer. Corn was in tassel, here and there tobacco
fields flaunted their tropical, broad-leaved luxuriance. Month by month
Warren had become increasingly forgetful of his lameness. That summer
Dorilliam invented a game which gave them both infinite delight. Every
morning now the big team of grays would stop in front of the house and
Dorilliam would come to the kitchen door.
“Mornin’. We’re awful short of help this year, Mis’ Denison,” he would
say. “We need somebody to set on the hay to keep it from fallin’ off
the wagon. Ain’t anybody ’round here could help us out, is there?”
Then Warren would yelp, throw himself on Dorilliam; and Anne, warned by
the watchful Jenny, would go to the door to wave to the helper perched
high on the scented load whenever it passed the house. Her heart sang
when the child would come home, his ruddy curls tousled and wet, and
forcefully announce his hunger.
“D’rilliam says when he’s all grown up he’s going to marry Jenny,”
young Warren announced one noonday, when the last of the pudding was
disappearing. “He says she ain’t nearly as silly as most girls. So he’s
going to marry her.”
Jenny was calm, disdainful. “He thinks he’s smart,” said she. “I
thought about us getting married long before he did.”
“What’s marry, Mums?” the boy asked.
Jenny replied. “It’s keeping house for a man and having a lot of
children,” said she. “First you’re lovers, and then you’re married.
See?”
“What’s lovers?”
“Goodness! I thought everybody knew that. Lovers are what kisses you
when there ain’t anybody looking. I’m going to have lots and lots of
’em. I wisht I wasn’t only fifteen.”
“What’s the sense of kissing?” Warren scoffed.
Jenny widened her eyes at him. “Plenty of sense, you silly! They go
down on their knees to you, too, and ask you will you be mine and all.
That’s when they’re lovers. After they’re husbands you cook for ’em.”
Anne bit her lip. Warren considered. “Am I a husband?”
Jenny rolled her eyes at Anne. “Will you listen to that?” said she.
“Well, Mums cooks for me. You do, too, only I don’t like your cooking,
much.”
“You’d have to like it or leave it, if you were my husband. But you
ain’t going to be. Oncet I thought maybe I’d marry a minister,” she
went on, dreamily. “There was one used to come to the hospital. His
hair curled something beautiful. But I guess I’ll marry D’rilliam. In
the country you get the egg money, and in the city all you get is the
cooking.”
Warren looked at his mother solemnly. “Have you got a husband, Mums?”
he asked.
Jenny abruptly shoved back her chair and arose. “Good-_night_,” said
she.
Anne laughed, but the question gave her thought. How soon would the
time come when the child would question her seriously, when she would
have to answer him honestly? What would the questions be, what would
her son’s judgment be? What--and there lay the core of it all--what
would her own judgment be? What was it now? What had she done to
Warren, and what had she done to Brice? Perhaps in her inmost thoughts
she had formulated that question before, but now it leaped out at her,
not to be avoided. Brice had done terrible things to her. She still
thought that. But she had done something to Brice, too, and judgment
arose before her, not with any traditional flaming sword, but with all
sorts of little things surrounding it--her withdrawals, his dumbly
submerged disappointments, daily hurts, small daily betrayals of their
love. She had wanted to drive him, had used one whip and another. She
had ignored their stings.
She was walking along a shady road one afternoon, dressed in a faded
gingham that had been one of her new gowns the year Brice went away.
Again walking had become her refuge and respite, as in the months
before Warren’s birth. Heathville lay too far from the highway for
hurrying motorists and the road was too rough and narrow for them; only
now and again did a large car spin through it, adventuring or lost.
Such a car was coming now, speeding over the top of the hill beyond,
coming down the descent in swirls of dust. Anne stepped off the road
into the goldenrod. The car passed. Then, to her surprise, it stopped
a few yards beyond. The driver stood up and looked back at her. It was
Ranney Copeland. From the back seat two women turned, one whom Anne did
not know, the other Tessie Ogden, with mocking eyes half-veiled under
supercilious lids.
Ranney came running with both hands outstretched. “Nance! My dear
girl,” he cried. “This is great luck. What are you doing in this
wilderness?”
She shook his hands, laughing. “But I live here, of course! Surely you
knew that from Alice.”
“Oh--Alice. My sweet little sister-in-law does not approve of me any
more than she ever did. I’ve asked about you, my dear, many’s the time,
and got snubbed.”
They walked towards the car. Tessie leaned over its side. “Nance, how
wonderful to meet you! I told Ranney this road must lead somewhere.”
Ranney’s wife leaned back in a corner, a thin woman, controlled,
dissatisfied, already obviously grasping at every aid to her fading
beauty. She smiled very faintly when Anne was introduced. The smile
remained on her lips. How did Anne sense the antagonism between her and
Tessie?
“I am on my way to the Whitmores’ camp,” Tessie explained, “and of
course dear Ranney insisted on taking me. We thought this would be a
short cut.” She was looking at Anne’s dress, at the dust on her shoes.
Presently the car sped away. Anne knew as well as though she had heard
it what Tessie’s comment would be. “Poor dear Nance! What a fright she
is! How she has aged!”
That supercilious woman in the corner, rouged and whitened, with
over-attended eyebrows; Ranney and Tessie--those were the sort of
people for whom she had failed Brice, forced him and herself out of
step. “God knows, I don’t want to stand in your way.” That was what
Brice had thought he was doing: setting her free for that. Into what
freedom had he gone?
He was again alive to her as he had been during their ten years
together; more alive, indeed, than he ever had been. During those years
she had ignored any possibility that there might be hidden places,
secret places, in Brice; now almost with panic she began to think about
them, for she had never believed he was dead. What had Brice become
during the years, what had he found or lost? And before that, before he
left, how much had he ignored and put up with? How much had he, whom
she had never suspected of being able to analyze at all, pondered upon
her, tried to dissect and disconnect what he wanted her to be and what
she was? To what extent had he weighed and forgiven, forborne? Had
the ultimate revelation been as abrupt for him as his decision was to
herself? Here, at last, with a completeness that had all the effect of
suddenness, like the opening of a door one has been furtively watching,
here was a new Brice; the same, but new. The one she had been married
to for ten years, the one she had not seen for more than six, abruptly
and forcefully making her think about him, estimate him, judge him and
judge herself.
Laughingly she related to Kent her roadside encounter with Ranney
Copeland and Tessie. He was lounging against the back of the arbor
in his garden, pipe in mouth, hugging his elbows. Something of her
old gayety returned for the moment. She gave him a pantomime of Mrs.
Copeland, mimicked the intonations of the others. His mouth quirked.
Then the playful mood left her. “And those, my good friend, people like
those are what I smashed up my marriage for.”
He looked at her, for a moment saying nothing. Never before had she
spoken of any past back of Heathville.
“I wonder,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“We-ll, I doubt if we’re really as much influenced by people as we’d
like to think. We all want to pass the buck. And we do smash things,
don’t we?”
“I did. My husband left me.”
Kent leaned forward, knocked the ashes from his pipe. “I supposed he
was dead,” he said.
“He is not dead. I don’t know where he is. But I know he is not dead.”
At first Kent apparently found nothing to say. He did not look at Anne,
but off into the woods. “What little pebbles we are,” he said after a
while, “and what big circles we do make.”
Anne drew a quick breath. She got to her feet, walked a little away,
came back, stood with her hands behind her. “I didn’t think I was only
a little pebble. I thought I was always right. I wanted to go my own
way, and I wanted my husband to go along with me. I stumbled. Not very
far. I know now that I blundered and hurt. I did not transgress any
great moral law. But the circles were big, yes! We got drowned in
them.”
“I wonder,” said Kent.
“Oh, I know what you think! Perhaps it’s true. Perhaps I’m not drowned.
In a sense. But I have been submerged.”
He gave her a quiet look. “Pretty well out now, though, aren’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“But aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’ve by no means rescued myself. I’ve learned something, I
suppose. But why does one have to learn? I told you I broke no great
laws. Yet I shattered my life and Brice’s--my husband’s. And now
there’s Warren involved in it.”
“Um,” he muttered.
“We are such blind blunderers. I’ve watched these people around here.
They are blind, too, most of them.”
“So are moles. But they get along.”
“By burrowing.”
They sat silent for a time. Kent said, musingly: “One doesn’t get
anywhere, talking of size or degree in moral law. Nor in denying it.
The very act of denying admits its existence.”
“But I just never thought about it,” Anne said. “So my husband is
somewhere, and my son is growing up. There’s no answer.”
On the way home that afternoon she took a by-road that led past a new
house. She had been there before. Floyd Travers had taken the girl
Elsie there before it was finished, and even now, as she drew near, she
heard the sharp cracking of hammer on nails. The little drama of the
child-mother and the young man had interested her. She had made friends
of them both. The young man was shingling the roof of the shed; he
waved when he saw her, and got down from the ladder.
“Well, now, Elsie will be mighty sorry she’s missed you,” he said. “She
drove down to get a mail-order package. I wanted to finish that roof.
Can’t work on it till after I get home, you know, and the days are
getting shorter.”
“I ought not to stop you,” Anne said.
He looked off to the west. “It won’t rain tonight. I’m glad you stopped
by, Mis’ Denison. I want to show you something.” He led her indoors.
The little place was shining and neat, pervaded by the smell of fresh
paint.
“Look at that,” the lad said, opening a door. “This room’s for the
little feller when he gets big enough. Elsie painted it all herself.
The furniture’s going to be painted, too, when we get it.”
Anne admired and praised. Floyd led the way back to the kitchen, and
opened another door. “Elsie wanted a regular pantry,” said he. “Her ma
never had one.”
The utensils were few and cheap. There were two pies set in a screened
window, and some jars of canned vegetables on an upper shelf. Anne
looked at the young man. He returned her look and nodded, smiling.
“She’s a fine housekeeper, Elsie is,” he said as they went out together.
Outside the house Anne hesitated. “Floyd, you’ve done a big thing,” she
said, and knew her lips trembled a little.
“Why, I don’t look at it that way,” the young man returned,
thoughtfully. “It’s sort of like this. Folks say Elsie made a mistake.
Some of ’em say worse than that. A feller asked me once if it didn’t
make any difference to me. I said sure it did, because I knew we had
something firm to stand on. Lots of folks get married and make their
mistakes afterwards. I know about Elsie’s, and she knows about it. So
we got that to stand on.”
6
The roads were still frozen. To save wood Anne sewed in the
kitchen. That afternoon she had been looking over the past with an
ingathering sweep that merged it into a whole, set it on the scales
of consciousness as an entity to be weighed not by the importance of
its impulses and its mistakes, not by intention of good or evil, not
by what gladness there was nor by the magnitude of its failures. Love,
marriage, her life with Brice; disaster, motherhood, toil; contact with
courage and misery, and with dumb striving--those set on one side of
the scale, and something on the other side that kept the balance even.
Were there nothing in life to counterbalance life the scale had gone
down long since, and humanity with it. Here and there, now and again,
she had glimpsed what there was; but still there remained a sense of
incompletion. To be and not to do was not enough, nor to envision and
not to strive. Yet what action lay within her control, within reach of
her initiative? On and on; but where? Why?
Someone was at her door. Not one of the neighbors--some stranger, since
the knock came from the front of the house. She put down her sewing,
went through the cold, narrow hall.
“Alice--you! Over these roads!”
“But I hadn’t seen you for nearly three years, Anne. I couldn’t wait
any longer.”
“You’ll have to come back to the kitchen. Alice, you dear, such a long
way to come----”
“George had business in Springfield. I’ve got to get back there
tonight. No, the car’s heated. The man can wait outside.”
“Tea--in a minute----”
“Yes. Anne, I did want to see you! Ranney said you were looking so--”
She stopped, and Anne laughed.
“Oh, yes, of course! Ranney! I have seen Ranney, and Mrs. Ranney, and
sweet Tessie!” Alice’s face had flushed slightly, and her eyes looked
troubled and shy, but Anne’s twinkled.
“Alice, you silly. Don’t you suppose I know perfectly well the sort of
thing Ranney said, and Tessie? I can hear her saying it: ‘Poor dear
Nance! How she’s aged! And what a fright she is!’ Wasn’t that it?”
“Something like that,” Alice confessed. Then she added, “Nance, don’t
you care any more?”
“About being a fright? I’m too busy to bother. I suppose I should, if I
stopped to think about it. I know I should.”
“I rather meant--about what they say.”
“Oh, that! That’s only funny.”
“You know, Anne, you really have changed,” Alice said after a while.
“And I don’t mean in looks only.” Anne laughed. “You always did laugh
at me, so you haven’t changed in that. But you seem to see things
differently. You’re not the same woman, not a bit like the girl you
were.”
“I am the same, though. I should feel pretty hopeless, if I thought
people could stop being themselves, and begin over again. I’d rather
know that something had been added. Even something taken away. I’d
rather stand on my past, even such as it is.”
“You mean not to have learned, to have----”
“Not to find, yes. Or keep on hoping to find, anyway.”
Alice leaned forward, her hands dropped beyond her knees. “Dear old
girl, if you’re still the same Nance I’m afraid I shall not dare to
tell you.”
Her heart seemed to stand still. Something clicked in her throat. She
could not ask.
Alice nodded. “Yes. We have heard from him. George has seen him.”
Anne stood up. She must have air--something. The clock on the mantel
ticked. The kettle hummed on the stove.
“Anne dear----”
“Wait!”
The clock. The stove. There was a yellowed place on the wall-paper.
Brice. The yellowed place was shaped like an animal. Brice.... Her
cheeks were cold. Oh, it was her hands on them. Earth rising up. No,
only the floor. Far off, coming along the road, children’s voices. Oh,
yes, from school. Supper after a while. Once there were stars ... a
pool. “I will not contest.” Shaped like an animal. Funny. What happened
when....
“Anne, dearest girl.”
She moved away from Alice’s touch. Presently she sat down again. “Tell
me.”
“A letter came. Through a lawyer. To Ranney’s office.”
“Tell me.”
“You see, Brice had been thinking all this time that you and Ranney
were----”
“Wait. Alice, I can’t----”
“It’s all right, dear, all right. We understood. Ranney gave George the
letter. Brice has a good business, lumber. He needed some money. There
was a paid-up insurance policy in your name. He thought you would be
willing----”
“Oh----”
“We talked it over. We wanted to do what was right. Ambrose came out.
George went to the lawyer, found out where Brice was. They both went
to see him.”
“They told him?”
“That there had never been anything between you and Ranney.”
“Did he believe?”
“They both told him.”
“What else?”
“Nothing else, Anne.”
“Not about--Warren?”
Alice was silent.
“Didn’t he--ask anything?”
“I’m afraid not, dear. But still, you know,” she went on eagerly, after
a moment, “just what they did tell him must have given him a good deal
of a moment. And Brice never did talk much, did he?”
Anne shook her head. No. Brice never did talk much. “But not to tell!
How could they?”
“I wanted them to. But I suppose things have to come out as they will.
Brice knows now that you are living, and still his wife. And now you
know that Brice is living.”
Presently Anne asked, “Where?”
Alice’s manner changed: that was over. “Oh, George says it’s lovely
country, a place way up in the hills, called Pelham. It’s somewhere at
the end of never. Awful roads, but the land’s cheap. Brice has a mill,
and several little tractor outfits that travel about and cut lumber. He
wanted to buy more land.”
So there, at last, out of the darkness, was Brice. No longer merely
the man she had loved and married and shared life with for ten years.
No longer only that man she had thought she could whip or cajole or
dominate, nor the man who had deserted her. Life had been sweeping her
on, doing things to her. There had been years to be lived through for
Brice, too. What had they done to him? What were his thoughts of her
now? Anger? Indifference? Distaste? She had admitted to herself long
since that she had never seen into his secret heart, never shared nor
divined his mental processes. Then what was he now? A stranger.
A good business, Alice had said, in Pelham. She remembered Pelham,
the little close room where they slept for those first two weeks, the
precipitous hills, the pool, the stars. Why had he gone to Pelham? What
had he thought to find there, to recapture? “A good business.” Then he,
too, had been carried along by life, by the details and ingredients
of living. But he had had his denials. Different from hers. She had
Warren. What compensations had Brice found, what strength?
One afternoon she was out of doors, contemplating her garden. The earth
had not dried enough for plowing, but already the sun had brought to
green life small creeping weeds, nature’s hurrying way of covering
scars and bare places. Someone had given Warren some duck’s eggs. Now
a frantic hen was trying to teach the strange yellow creatures to
scratch. She watched them, smiling a little: even a hen’s hopes and
plans.... Then she raised her head and listened. That was Warren’s
voice, shrieking, howling. She took a quick step or two towards the
voice, then stood still, biting her lip. He hated a fuss made over him.
She would wait. Then she saw them coming over the field, Warren ahead,
Jenny racing madly after him, calling. Anne’s lips felt cold, but she
waited and watched. Warren was wild with fury. The sound told that. But
he was running. Not limping, but running, tearing headlong towards home
like any small boy in a rage.
“It’s bees, Mis’ Denison,” Jenny’s call reached her. “He got in a bees’
nest. Bees got him.”
She heard, and did not hear. He was pelting towards her, crimson of
face, furious, howling. At last he threw himself against her, but when
she stooped to embrace him he fought her away.
“Get ’em off o’ me. Go ’way. Le’ me go. Get ’em off o’ me.”
Jenny came panting. “Gosh! There ain’t anything the matter with his
legs any more.”
Anne knelt on the ground, tried to hold the child. “Warren, keep still!
Stop fighting me. How can I get the bees off if you won’t let me touch
you?”
“There ain’t any bees on him, Mis’ Denison. He ran away from ’em.”
“There are, too,” Warren cried, glaring at Jenny through tears. “They
hurt. You get ’em off o’ me.”
Anne had captured his hands. “The bees are gone, Warren. There aren’t
any on you. But do you know what you’ve done? Stop crying--look at me!
You’ve run away from the bees!”
“I’ll say he did!” Jenny affirmed, grinning.
“I don’t care!” The boy still blazed. “You get the hurts off o’ me,
then!”
Anne led him into the house. “Soda’s what you put on ’em,” said Jenny
the experienced. So with soda they anointed him. Presently he was
counting the daubs.
“I don’t think much of bees,” said he thoughtfully. “Drat their old
hides. I want my supper.”
That night in her bedroom Anne stood by the window. No moon; but
stars were out in cool myriads. Their light fell on the earth like a
caressing hand reached out in sleep. A line came into her mind, “The
army of unconquerable law”.... That was it. Unconquerable law. Ageless,
untroubled serenity. Submission, no breaking of ranks. No beating
against things as they were. Safe inside of restraint. Freedom.
A distant world, a gleaming planet, dropped beyond a hill.