His mother’s curiosity about the lassie disappeared at the first
glimpse she got of his face. She put him to bed, with hot drinks and
heated stones, with quilt after quilt wrapped about him. But still
he chilled and shivered. He was so wretched that she had no heart to
reprove him for that rash outing through the rain.
For a long time he remained fever-shaken and low-spirited, the last
one certainly she would venture to ask about a girl. Day after
day he lay contrasting in his mind those two hours with Chirstie,
contrasting his dreams with the reality, while the rain continued
to sweep across the prairies in gray and windy majesty. One day
Andy returned dripping from the post office with the news of Lee’s
surrender. Wully celebrated the event with an unusually hard chill.
The tidings of Lincoln’s death sickened him desperately. He got to
thinking he was never again to be a strong man. And he could see no
reason for wanting to be.
After a few weeks the rains ceased, and the spring flooded her
sunshine over the fields with high engendering ecstasy. The
McLaughlins, man and boy, from dawn to darkness went over their
ground, getting the prodigal soil into the best possible tilth,
scattering the chosen seed by hand. Even on the holy Sabbath of the
Lord, Wully’s father walked contentedly through his possessions,
dreaming of the coming harvest, and of the eventual great harvest
of a nation. It was lambing time, and calving time, and time for
little pigs and chickens. The very cocks went about crowing out their
conquering energy all over the yard, till it seemed to Wully, sitting
wearily on the doorstep, that he was the only thing in the world sick
and useless and alone.
May passed, and June. Thoughtful men sighed when they spoke of the
soldier, and hated war the more. Five years ago he had gone away a
strong, high-spirited lad, and now he dragged himself brokenly around
the dooryard, the wreck of a man. His mother, trying to tempt his
appetite, was at her wits’ end. She sometimes thought if he had been
a younger boy she would have given him a thoroughly good spanking.
She didn’t know what to make of him. Had he not always been the
happiest, most even-tempered of her flock? Had there not been times
when he and Allen had made bets about which one would begin chilling
first, when malaria, like everything else, had been a joke with them?
She had never seen a child as unhappy, as irritable as her Wully was
now. There was no way of pleasing him. All he wanted was to be left
alone, to lie with his face in his arms on the bed, scarcely speaking
civilly when she tried to get him to eat something. But whenever
she said to herself that he ought to be spanked, at once her heart
reproved her. How could she imagine all that he had been through, all
the strain of those years? The poor laddie, so wretched, and his own
mother having no patience with him!
In all these weeks Wully had seen the girl only a few times, and none
of them an occasion much less painful than the first. Once he had
been well enough to go to church. He had waited till she came out of
the door, and then, before them all, he had gone over to the wagon
where she was seating herself with her brother. She had drawn away
from him as if he had been a rattler, he said to himself bitterly.
What did she suppose he had done, anyway, that she didn’t want even
to look in his direction? He had gone again to her desperately one
evening, determined to find out what it all meant. She had indeed
been alone when he came within sight, but, seeing him, she had called
sharply to Dod to come and sit beside her. As if she were afraid of
him! As if he would hurt her! She was even more distant now than she
had been when he was in New Orleans, when he could at least think of
her with hope. Once he had driven over with his mother to see her,
had ridden along in forbidding silence, wondering how much his mother
knew of that first visit, dreading lest she might mention Chirstie’s
name significantly to him. He had not condescended to go into the
house that time, but finding Dod’s hoe, he had weeded their little
patch of corn, weeded it fiercely and well, to let her see how he
would have worked for her if only she had been willing. His mother
had not said a word about the girl as they rode home together, but
she sighed deeply, from time to time, so that he guessed Chirstie had
not even been cordial to her.
He tried hard enough, as he grew stronger, to shake off his
depression. There were plenty of girls in the world whom he might
marry, weren’t there? The trouble was, he hated other girls. Still,
he couldn’t let merely one woman make him unhappy, could he? Not
much! He used to be happy all the time, before he got to thinking
about her so much. He would brace up, he vowed, and forget her. But
Harvey Stowe came home in July, and came at once to see him, a strong
and hilarious Harvey, who wouldn’t take any excuses. Wully must come
over to his wedding. Wully would not. Likely he would go to another
man’s wedding! He would have fever that day if he hadn’t had it for a
week! But he went.
The day after, thinking of his friend’s happiness as he walked
through his father’s wheat, he sat down to rest in a path which
it shaded, and stretched himself out in it. There suddenly and
poignantly, for the first time in his life, he envied Allen and
wanted to die. He wanted to die with so keen a despair that never
afterwards could he hear the cocksure rail against suicide. He
hated living vehemently, and wanted to escape from it. There was no
use saying one girl couldn’t make him unhappy. He was meant for
Chirstie, and without her life had no meaning. Some way, it had just
that combination of demure eyes and white arms to stimulate his
desire till it was without mercy. He could not go on without her. He
wished there had been a battle that day, which he could have gone
into. He would have shot himself dead with his first bullet. That was
the climax of his despair, though he was far from knowing it.
The next Sunday he walked with his brothers to the church where the
lairds of the Waupsipinnikon, ragged but clean, worshiped the God
of their fathers. The little church they had built out of their
wartime prosperity stands on a green knoll on Gib McWhee’s farm.
Entering it, one saw then, as one sees nowadays, a large unadorned
square room, with only one beauty, and that so great that any church
in the world might well envy it. Eight high, narrow windows it has,
pointedly arched, of clear glass, and whatever one thinks of a style
of ecclesiastical architecture which draws one’s attention from
the sermon to the prairies, those eight windows frame pictures of
billowing, cloud-shadowed, green distances in which surely sensible
eyes can never sufficiently luxuriate.
Up the scrubbed aisle, into pews varnished into yellow wave patterns,
family after family filed decorously that morning, mothers and
infants in arms and strong men--there were as yet no old men in that
world. Wully went to the family pew. Before the war he had usually
sought out a place where the overflow of big boys sat as far as
possible away from the source of blessings. The McLaughlin pew held
only twelve, and that uncomfortably. But there had never been more
than twelve children at church together, since small Sarah had been
born after her brothers had gone to war.
The congregation sang their Psalms out of books now. No more
lining-out of numbers in a congregation so well-established and
prosperous. The man of God read the Scriptures, and then at last came
that welcomed long prayer, good for fifteen minutes at least. Wully,
sitting determinedly in a certain well-considered place in the pew,
bowing his head devoutly and bending just a bit to one side, could
watch Chirstie through his fingers, where she sat on the other side
of the church in the pew just behind the McLaughlins. Her eyes were
closed, but his did a week’s duty. There was no doubt about it. She
was getting thinner and thinner. It wasn’t just his imagination. She
was paler. She was unhappy. He had noticed that week by week. Surely
she was not happy!
The minister was an indecent man, cutting that prayer short in so
unceremonious a fashion. Wully wondered the elders didn’t notice his
carelessness. But after the sermon there would be another prayer,
just a glimpse long. He had that to look forward to. He made a mental
note of the text, which the children would be expected to repeat at
the dinner table, and then settled down, to be disturbed no more
by sermons. He had long ago acquired a certain immunity to them.
A breeze cooled the warm worshiping faces, and from outside came
the soothing hum of bees, and the impatient stamping of fly-bitten
horses. The minister’s voice was rich and low. The younger children
slept first, unashamedly, against the older ones next them, and then,
gradually, one God-fearing farmer and another, exhausted by the
week’s haying, nodded, struggled, surrendered, and slept.
Wully was wide awake, waiting for the last prayer. There was no time
to be lost, when the petitions were so short. He turned his head, and
there--oh, Chirstie was looking at him! With head bowed, but eyes
wide open, she was _looking_ at him! Hungrily, tenderly, pitifully,
just as he wanted her to look! Their eyes met, and her face blossomed
red. She turned her head hastily away. Let her turn away! Let her
pray! He _knew_, now! That was enough! For some reason she didn’t
mean him to understand. But he had found out! It was all right. He
could wait. He could wait any length of time, if only she would look
at him again in that way! The congregation had risen, and had begun
the Psalm. He would tell her, then and there, how glad he was, how he
understood! He lifted up his voice and sang, sang louder than anyone
else. That was what Allen used to do, when the service particularly
bored him. He would sing the last Psalm louder and clearer than the
whole congregation, with the face of an earnest, humble angel, while
his elders admired, and his contemporaries hid their amusement as
best they might. Chirstie would know Wully was sending her a joyous,
patient answer. What did it matter that in going out she never once
would turn towards him? Perhaps that was the way of women. They don’t
just tell you all that is in their hearts. It was all very well. He
knew what she was thinking.
After dinner, he said he was going down to the swimming hole, where
the assembly of cousins proved week by week that the heat had
prevailed over the shorter catechism. But instead he rushed eagerly
and cautiously over to Chirstie. He knew there might be someone with
her on Sunday, and he left his horse some distance away, intending,
if he saw others there, to come back and wait. There was not a
sound to be heard as he crept up, though he stopped, listening. He
hesitated, and drew nearer. Then he saw her. She was sitting in
the little plot of shade the cabin made, on the doorstep, and her
head was bowed on her arms. On a bit of rag carpet on the ground,
her little sister was sleeping. Chirstie didn’t hear him. He went
cautiously nearer, not wanting to startle her. He stood still,
scarcely knowing how to be the least unwelcome. What was this he
saw? What was this? She was crying! He stood still, watching her
carefully. She was shaken with sobbing.