3stalwarts (148 page)

“My, aren’t they pretty ones! Alike as alike, and shaped like city kid.” She laughed at Falk. “You never made a pair of shoes like that for me.”

He raised his face to hers.

“Oh, don’t deny!” she said. “I know why. The reason’s there.”

She stretched her own long foot out underneath her skirt. Dust was on the old boot. Falk examined it with his eyes, then raised them to her face.

“It’s worn well,” he said; but Mary saw that Dorothy drew back, and her face became cold.

That evening, as Falk completed his work, she and Robert sat quietly watching him. But his eyes were discreet. He hardly spoke from supper onwards.

Only when Mary tried on the shoes and felt his hands lacing them, and the leather like a caress through the stocking against her skin, did she feel a return of the release of spirits that had so stirred her that afternoon. She noticed afterwards, for the two days he worked at the farm, that Melville kept himself occupied not far from home; and twice she came upon him exchanging low talk with Dorothy, which they turned awkwardly into an open channel.

But once as she milked at twilight Falk came into the barn, where his things were and where he slept, and leaned for a moment against the post. She felt his eyes on her bent shoulders, where the collar of her dress gaped loosely up.

She did not speak, but her hands became more conscious of the milk.

At length he said, “I’m through tomorrow. I won’t forget our afternoon together.”

He passed her quietly, going out again.

But after he had gone, when she wore the new shoes on a Sunday, she became aware of a strange unholiness in her thoughts which she tried to put away; and the white eyes of Harley Falk’s white horse would enter her dreams as if through them the man himself watched her secret thinking.

5

‘In some old countries women kneel”

Mary had dispossessed the Melvilles of their bed. She lay straight out upon her back, her feet against the footboard, her wrists in leather loops. One of Squirrel’s reins had been passed round the footboard and under the bedding with loops stitched in the ends for her to grasp. But now she had a respite; her senses were released from their inward fury and fled out on dusky paths… .

Between two rafters dwelt a spider. She wondered how many days ago he had set up his web. She had seen him when they first had put her in the bed; he was connecting a new brace, his hands marvelously deft in spreading the sheaf of threads he spun. But, from the time that Mrs. Hovey first brought the lamp to the bedside, the spider had been troubled. Mary had seen him hiding himself inside his web, as if he would have closed his lidless eyes; and now when the quiet returned he had made up his mind —he was reeling in skein after skein in readiness for moving.

She watched him till he had unfastened the last thin, silken anchor. He lingered a moment as if to take one farewell look. Then he put out his hands and began his scuttling travel. Choosing the shadow of a rafter, he ran the whole length of the ceiling. Mary saw his body five times lift to cross a rafter upside down before he scrambled down the wall and ducked out through the door… .

In the big bed her body felt indescribably small. The wide spread of sheets was like the ocean she remembered crossing— years and years the crossing seemed, years before she had seen Jerry, years before she had come westward to her stay in Utica, and years again before she had moved on to Melvilles, where she and Jerry had united time. Time was in her back; time absorbed her being. They had taken time together to fashion it; and now time was seeking freedom.

Immediately she heard a stool-leg gently bump and Mrs. Hovey was bending over the pillow.

“Well, dearie.”

Mary opened her eyes. It was the first time she had taken a coherent look at Mrs. Hovey. “Ma Hovey,” Dorothy named her; for it was said that she had helped at half the births in Onondaga County. She had arrived with Melville early in the afternoon, a jouncing figure crowding him halfway off the wagon seat. Squirrel dripped lather to his stifles; but Ma Hovey had no eye for him. Directly, she had scrambled down and waddled into the cabin, and before her shawl was off she had taken the command from Dorothy.

“She’ll use this bed right now. Later we’ll ready the table for her when it’s time.”

Mary had not noticed her face, but she had felt the hands upon her body.

“There’ll be time and time,” Mary had heard her voice. “How is it, dearie? Pretty bad?”

She had not expected an answer: Mary felt that her hands would tell her whatever might be needful. She heard her saying to Dorothy, “A fine girl for bearing. I’m not troubled. And she’s healthy. I should estimate a girl by place and action. Light a fire.”

Now Mary saw her face— round-cheeked, with a small, serious mouth, and unworn eyes. Her skin was freshly pink and white— a strange thing in so old a woman living westward; only her hands were toil-scarred.

Ma Hovey brought a pitcher of cool water and a rag and pressed the hair back from Mary’s forehead.

“Does that feel better, dearie?”

Mary nodded.

“Rest yourself, then, all you can.”

For a moment the unworn eyes, clear blue, looked down into Mary’s wide grey shadowed ones. It was like seeing an immeasurable distance up-ward; she was soothed as if white clouds touched her with dry soft coolness.

Mary obediently closed her eyes, but when she heard Ma Hovey’s broad feet turn away she opened them and looked at the grizzled curly hair caught neatly in its crocheted purple basket.

There was a distinct spring in the old woman’s step. Bringing a woman through childbirth was the stuff of life to her; when she put her hands upon a laboring body, she put her own years out of sight. She sat down softly on her stool, and Mary heard her laying down laws upon laws to Dorothy.

Dorothy’s voice was humble. To the last moment, her homely face had kept its determined cheerfulness. She had made little jokes with Jerry. Had he thought of twins, for instance? Would he like it four in family? But when Ma Hovey came, she had relapsed into a frightened creature who held Mary dear.

But Mary had not cared; these things were all like wind at night— unseen, but dimly listened to.

Ma Hovey had said, “You might as well fetch Dr. Earl.”

Both men had said that they would go. He was expecting; he would be ready; he had promised, at a word.

“One of you two had ought to stay.”

Dorothy sounded panicked.

Ma Hovey grunted.

“No, let them both get out. They’re no use, their dreary faces.”

But Robert had gone alone.

“I’d feel ashamed,” said Jerry.

Mary wondered where he was. She did not want to see him. She resented the fright in his eyes that infected her in her still moments. But she listened now. Would he be by the well, perhaps, getting himself a drink of cool? Or would he be out in the barn? Or maybe listening by the back window, where the cockscomb lifted shriveled tufts?

What she could see her eyes found tiresome. The smell of steaming water on the hearth was stifling in her nostrils; her skin identified the lamp heat, and the fire warmth; and she lay dully at the mercy of the things that made a man and woman.

A little breath of night air stole through the slightly opened door. She seemed to feel it coming long before it came to her. She was aware of it creeping past the ankles of the seated women; it flickered the fire gently; it stole on across the floor to the foot of the bed and tried to lift itself. She lay deathly still, unable to help it, seeking to will it upwards. Then it did rise across the sheet; it stole upon her body with its cooling finger-tips; she felt it in her nostrils, damp and sweet with meadow smells. It eased her eyelids, and touched the stiff skin on her forehead, chilling the bubbles of sweat. For a precious breathless instant, it carried her senses through the cabin walls.

How was it that she could hear through the dry, piled logs the beat in the night outside: the ticking of the crickets; the throb of greenbugs in the grass; the indefinable stir of the small creeping things underground and on the ground— the moles, the grubs, the worms; the wet sly inching of the marsh slugs; the ants awake in sandy palaces; the spiders casting their dew-pearled threads; the gnats that hatch in darkness, troubling the still pools; the unseen midget things that make the pulse and keep the earth alive?

She had not been born in these wide sprawling lands, she had not grown where one burnt acre stood for the first work of a man against the wilderness; yet her senses were alive to them, as if the soft hollow in her hardened palms could feel the whole world sleeping.

And then through it her stretched ears caught the steady crunch of boots upon the road. They trod stiffly back from Onondaga way, and she remembered that night before the spring came, so long ago, when Jerry walked to her out of the mist. She knew his step. He stopped at the turn-in to the cabin. She could imagine his thin face staring at the window light. But her heart hardened in her. He had turned away. The dismal burden of his boots crunched out the precious little sounds. The burden entered her, her eyelids were made heavy, and her heart bent down… .

“He’s young,” Ma Hovey was saying just above the gentle beating of the fire. “But he’s been civil to me and I do allow that he does well. A young doctor, but minded to learn from those that know his business better. He doesn’t hold with cotton swathe or cricket mark or twice around the bas-ket, but he’s young. Young people don’t believe-Hark! There’s the boy. Poor boy. I feel a pity for him. Hush… .

“Yes, dearie, coming on? Let them. Old Ma’s tending of you. Carry them through, stronger. But not too strong. You’ve got a long ways to travel, dearie, but you’re fine. Here’s water for your forehead. Yes, be easier. My, that was a dandy big one! That’s the kind that counts. Yes, I know it. Yes, but that’s the kind. It’s like an extra horse hitched to a wagon. Guarantees you through the bog holes. But don’t think of it. Don’t think of anything, dearie. That’s a fine girl. That’s a good one, too. You’ve got a good long ways to travel, but Ma Hovey’s riding with you… .

“Yes, Mrs. Melville. Still some time; but just the same, that young man of a doctor might as well turn up or else I’ll have to get him a surprise to greet him… .

“No, now don’t look worried, Mrs. Melville. Land to goodness, Ma Hovey’s brought a basketful of babies free with her own self. You needn’t be a-worrit. Give the young feller his two dollars, get a medical blessing if you like, and leave him stay to home— that’s what I’d say. But this boy’s like them all. He’s earning money and thinks he’s bound to spend it. Like a funeral, too. What good’s a coffin? Oh, I’ve laid them out, poor things. Three that I helped to being bora. The same very hands, identical, these here. It’s funny… .

“Yes, I’ve helped my lot of babies. I always call them mine, Mrs. Melville. And why not? A good percentage of them wouldn’t be at all except for me. I mind the first. The doctor couldn’t make it in his sleigh with two fat horses. Couldn’t venture it. Those horses got floundered down in snow, he said, and he was troubled with deep rheumatism, making him lame. But I walked in on Indian snowshoes. I went out that afternoon, I mind, and bought them for a dollar and a half, a yard of India cloth. I wasn’t troubled by a pair of horses. Yes, it was Tremaster’s boy. She was a little thing, no more than a curled leaf to handle, and the baby ranting in her like a scalping redskin. The man’s no better than a howling baby himself. I saw that just at once I got inside the door and stamped the snow off’n the shoes. So I told him, ‘Wipe your nose and boil some water.’ He done it, but he never liked me after. I showed him how to hold her hands, and I did everything. At least the baby did, a ranting boy; I never knew one lust so hard for air. He’d got the cord around his neck and was choked blue. I do declare he swore in French when I had cut him free. And do you know there wasn’t thread in all that house? Poor little pretty, out there striving in those woods without a blessed notion. She had a woolen skirt of English weave and I unraveled a thread. Yes, Mrs. Melville. And there wasn’t any harm, and the boy’s a man now down in Albany, making speeches in Assembly, no doubt about canals. Oh, well, Tremaster never really liked me, I suppose. And that was how I started in, so don’t you fret yourself. …

“Yes, dearie, if you want a sip. Now take a good hold of them straps. Drive yourself if you’re so minded. There’s hills and rivers, but there’s time. I’ll cool you, Dearie… .

“Yes, Mrs. Melville. He better had turn up. You and me might just as well arrange the table. Yes, it’s hard; but that’s all right. There’s nothing comfortabler than a good stout table, all concerned. The places I’ve seen babies born in! In some old countries women kneel. I saw a Swedish girl that did it that way. Her man just held her there, between his knees. They were moving westward; it came on sudden; and there wasn’t chance to bring her to a house. Twins, I tell you, for a fact. Under a beech tree with the curiousest little chipmunk. That’s it— just stretch it that way.

“Now, Mrs. Melville, let’s us set down and wait a minute, comfortable. My feet get tiresome to me sometimes and if I don’t set down I get all wearied. If you had a wet of cordial, and you might cook up a little tea to give her after. Not too strong and without sugar. Bohea tea’s the best, though I don’t gainsay a cup of hyson, and the city people fancy souchong. Yes, I am slightly partial to peach cordial. It’s a pleasant drink for surely.

It settles flutters in a woman. Good for you, too, Mr. Melville. Don’t you worrit. Drink it slow— and you might just companionate what I’ve got left here with a small drop more. I make mine in a burnt-oak keg, but this is very tasty. There! There’s the doctor. Yes, he’s coming fast. That quiet boy has stopped him. Asking how his wife is, probably. And the doctor says she’s dandy. Oh, well, you might as well set back those glasses, Mrs. Melville. I’d rather he had nothing till we’re finished. Out of sight is out of thinking… .

“Yes, Dr. Earl. We’re doing nicely… .”

Mary no longer cared to ravel out the messages her twisted senses carried to her. She tried to fetch a smile forth for the doctor; she saw his face bent over her, the lamplight on the tightened skin beside his eyes, the slow contraction of his pupils after his dark night ride. It was the face of a young man under thirty, with shaven cheeks and a gently optimistic mouth that smiled back at her.