3stalwarts (159 page)

Piute took Cosmo’s place at the left winch. They sank her in a dozen drives.

Two men held up the new pile on the line that Bates was calling. The driver sludged her way ahead. Her beetle jaws took hold of the pile; she seemed to take it with an appetite for hemlock. Cosmo patted her timbers.

“Bite her, Josey.”

Josey bit.

But Jerry, passing Bates’s orders and figuring the cribbing, thought, “I’d better not go up. I dassn’t trust it.” And as the pile-driver thudded down, he seemed to hear old Issachar say, “I wouldn’t blame you.”

Bates said, “That’s old grass muck. It smells like ague.”

3

7 take the candle’

Corbal’s Mill was a tiny shack housing a single set of stones. A nameless brook running west into the Irondequot supplied power for its ten-foot wheel; and a woods track of a quarter mile connected it with the Victor road.

Jerry came upon it all at once. A turn round a balsam opened the tiny valley. A meadow full of swale grass bordered the brook with cowslips and the clean-edged blades of blue flag. The stream slid over a bed of moss and cress; when he lay down, the sod was cool and springy against his chest, and the water he sucked up was cold as snow.

He splashed his face with water, and a trout sprang off as if some finger had released a trigger in it.

Down the glade he heard the mutter of the running mill; and when he had followed the road a little way, he saw its roof against the tamaracks, shaking over the drive of the trundle. The race was drinking; just beyond it the buckets of the wheel caught frothy cupfuls.

Jerry stood at the edge of the dam to listen to the noise of milling— the rush of the spillway, the sloshy creak of the wheel, the rumble of the trundle, and the mouthing roar of stones.

His eyes swept over the clearing. There was a smoke in the house chimney. The door was open, letting a finger of sunlight into the kitchen, but he could see no moving dress. Behind the tamaracks a fretful dog was barking; the sound came faintly over the mill din. Corbal, he thought, must keep a cow. But nowhere could his eyes find what they searched for. So he stepped down over the shoulder of the dam to the mill door.

Inside, a mist was powdering from the hopper. The upright timbers shook like trees in wind. The miller bent over the millspout to let the flour dribble through his fingers. Now and then he rubbed it in his palms and blew upon it. Then his left hand touched the brayer lever. He did not hear Jerry’s entrance; no sound could live in the running mill but that made by the feasting stones. But when Jerry put his hand on the man’s elbow, he turned slowly.

“My name is Jerry Fowler,” shouted Jerry.

In all his face the miller’s still blue eyes alone had color. His cheeks were dusted, his beard was coated white on every hair.

His beard opened to say, “Hey?”

He was without surprise.

Jerry repeated his name. “Can you say if Norah Sharon’s in the house?”

The miller looked at him a moment, shook his head, and slowly moved to the other side of the trough. His grey boot kicked the trundle lever.

There came an instant diminution in the thunder of the mill. The dust rose thinner; the trundle clacked emptily on its ratchet; the timbers shook more easily; only the wheel outside, relieyed from work, began to gain a revolution. Silence beat in upon them, harder for Jerry to speak against than mill sounds.

“Eh?” roared the miller. “I’m kind of hard of hearing. Speak out louder, mister.”

Jerry bawled his question once more, conscious of the miller’s eyes on his strained mouth. The stones were falling off from their full-throated roar. The note rose up for a dramatic instant, then whimpered down.

“You want to see the girl?” shouted the miller.

“Yes.”

“You needn’t get so hot about it.” The miller beat his sleeves out. “Most likely she’s down to the creek. A person, there, can hear that engine beating where they’re making the canal.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re Bennet’s nephewy?”

“Yes.”

“You needn’t look so hot. My name is Nathan Corbal. I was a boy myself once, queer as you may think it. So I ain’t surprised. Stay back for supper.”

“Thanks,” Jerry said again.

Corbal kicked the trundle lever over and the water laid its hand upon the mill, and the silence that had seemed so mastering a breath before was battered forth.

The miller hoisted a sack and cast its contents into the hopper with a practised fling of his shoulder. He caught the flour from the spout.

“This wheat smells colicsome to me,” he shouted.

But Jerry had gone out.

A footpath meandered along the brook bank; and the grass that Jerry walked through reached halfway to his knees. The sun was warm against his face, and the air perfect in its stillness; and the sunset flush reached itself upward, and floated a misty veil over the small valley.

The stream crept under the overhanging grass banks, occasionally offering reflection in the corner of a bend; its current was like glass. It curved round the tamaracks and suddenly entered the dark water of the Irondequot; and here the footpath turned north, mounting into the woods.

Jerry came upon her in an open patch of fine pale woods-grass where honeysuckle and rue unfolded darker leaves. She was looking down at the running water of the creek. On the far bank, flags raised a palisade along the water, and gazing back at the girl a heron stood on tiptoe. They looked as if they had not moved for hours. But when Jerry stepped forth, the heron tilted forward. He lost his grace; his wings became lugubrious, heavy, pulsing oars, and his reflection in the water, which had been so clear when he stood still, now broke across the eddies of the central current.

The girl lifted her head to watch the heron go. For an instant Jerry saw her profile, clear-cut against the leaves, the small arched nose, the dark eye absorbed in the bird’s flight. She was wearing the same dress, fitting her slim arms closely as she leaned back upon them with her hands in grass.

He could find no words.

Then she turned slowly to face him. Her lips bent quietly. The heavy, deep-fringed lids sank slightly over her dark eyes, and her head bent.

He sat down awkwardly beside her.

“I couldn’t come up sooner,” he said at last. “I hope you’ve been all right.”

She lifted her eyes to his.

“Mr. Corbal has been nice, and his wife too.”

Her answer subtly conveyed a different meaning.

“It must have been lonesome to you.”

“A person feels quiet here. A person feels safe.”

“Just the same, it must have been lonesome to you.”

Her glance was slow, time-taking; her voice half toneless.

“Down here I heard where you were working.”

“That was the piler.”

“It sounded powerful. Like a bittern. But it came all day long.”

Jerry’s hands twitched on his knees.

“It does get into one.”

Her eyes dropped down before him.

“Yes. It must be a powerful piece of work,” her voice went on. “And the queer old man that brought me here said you had charge of it.”

“I’m just building the culvert flooring. There’s stonework to do after, and then the embankment.”

“I would mightily like to see it sometime.”

“There’s nothing to see now, except a lot of men working in muck mud.”

“What do you do?”

“Drive piles.”

He felt a little prick of pleasure at her interest. But as he looked at her, his instinct veered away from work. Now, by an ironic twist, he saw that he would rather be away, lost in a new land; and without thinking of it he saw his life as Mary had desired. Himself alone, performing his own tillage, coming home.

“Drive piles,” he repeated. “That’s all. Then nail on wood. People will look at it after and say how fine the engineering is.”

He listened to the creek.

Norah said, “I haven’t told you thanks for what you’ve done, Mr. Fowler.” Her eyes swept up from her hands to his face. And again she lowered the lids with that odd conveyance of humility and invitation. “I’m very grateful to you. There aren’t many men, I guess, would take such care of a strange girl. I take it very kind.”

Jerry’s hands plucked strongly at the grass. He felt a power in his fingers’ ends. An impulse stirred him to tell her she might always count on him.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I get tired of working on the same thing.”

Her voice came quietly.

“It must be hard upon a married man, so far away.”

“Who told you I was married?”

“Mr. Bennet said so.”

“Well, I am. I’ve got my wife in Montezuma and a baby.”

Her hand made a little flutter through the grass. The fingers were pale, slender as new grass leaves.

“I’d feel sorry for a married man.”

Jerry found his voice. He looked away for speaking.

“You could be a comfort for me— if you didn’t mind my coming here sometimes to see you.”

“I’d be glad to have you come. It seems I’m grateful to you.”

He watched the shadows growing under the flags, the purpling of the stream. A tanager, like a spark flung from the sunset, darted past their faces. The water sucked hungrily against the banks. The night stole coolly inward.

To Jerry in the darkness came some understanding of the man who had bound up the girl in Lager’s cabin. And it made him afraid; for she was not afraid, but sat there waiting in her silence. She was not beautiful in the way he thought of beauty— she was so small; but she put keenness in his senses to read her strength. In her slim body was a spark to start the forces moving— fires uniting on a single stick, the eddy joining separate streams, the thrust of wind beneath the snow.

He was afraid.

He said, “The dew’s begun to form itself.”

“I like the feeling of it on me.”

In the gathered dusk, her face was like an orchid petal. Her dark eyes were large, and the lashes were shadows; and as she looked at him he felt as if he looked into a well at night, his eyes swimming with the darkness, until he saw the reflection of stars on the water, but so far away he could not tell whether he looked up or down. He felt his hands grow large upon his knees. His voice was thick.

“We’d best go back to Corbal’s.”

She made no answer. But when she rose to .her feet, her body was light in lifting. Her hands fluttered against his sleeves like pale moths; but when they touched his hands he felt them warm and dry, and the strength in them.

Corbal’s wife was placing supper on the table. A squat little woman, with brown, wrinkled features. She did not speak to them; it was as if she had not been aware of them at all. But the miller, with his hands red from washing, greeted them heartily.

“Come and set, boy. Kin to Ike Bennet is always welcome here, be they he or she. There’s lobbered milk for ye and cinnamon for sprinkling and corn pancake for sopping it. Lobbered milk is easy to a dusty throat.”

He squared his elbows and ate noisily, breathing upon each mouthful.

The girl occupied her place becomingly. She kept her eyes veiled. Mrs. Corbal sat next to the miller. Her appetite was frugal. Watching her stolid brown face, Jerry wondered whether she carried Indian blood.

It was a strange meal, taken so in utter silence. But the slovenly kept kitchen was cool and dry, and the door was tight against mosquitoes.

When he was done, Corbal sighed and pushed himself away from table.

“That wheat I ground to-day smelled colicsome. Bottom-land growing.

I argued against Dan Ledyard many’s the time.” He shook his head. “He’ll have an ailing family this winter.”

He made the remark at his wife as if he expected no answer. He stroked his beard, patting out small clouds of mill dust. He did not look at either of them.

“Any time you’re wishful to come visiting, boy, you’re welcome.”

He stamped through a door. They heard his bed strings creak, his boots thud on the floor. A wooden clock ticked steadily. The woman gathered up the dishes, took a pan from the fire, and dumped them in. She washed them stolidly.

When she was done she looked at them. Her eyes were black and lustreless against the light.

She said, “Good night,” with surprising clearness; then she followed her husband.

They had gone so suddenly that Jerry had had no decent chance to take his leave. He stared across at Norah.

She was sitting at the table still, her hands folded in her lap. Her face was calm, her cheeks smooth, pink and white; the blackness of her hair was almost stormy.

Then she raised her eyes. Her small mouth smiled.

“Just like that every night. First him, then her.”

Jerry said, “She’s strange-appearing.”

“Yes.”

The frankness of her eyes on his disturbed him.

“But I’ve gotten used to it. I suppose now it is my turn. I take the candle and go through that door. The stairs are built against the wall.”

Jerry felt his hands upon the table. Outside the spilling water hushed and roared. Looking at him, she laughed softly. “Good night, Mr. Fowler. Come again sometime.”

She left him seated in the darkness.

He sat there like a fool, staring at the dark space of the open door. He watched the candlelight creep after her up the stair wall. He saw the cracks in the plaster fade away. He heard her feet move overhead; he heard them in her shoes; and then he heard them bare. He swore at himself.

Then he got up. He hesitated. His hands felt hot as they groped for his hat. “Mocking of me. Let her stay there.” His hand encountered his hat brim. He fumbled for the door. He tried to go quietly that she might not hear him. “Leave out of here, you fool. Leave her be. She doesn’t know.” The cool was against his face. He closed the door behind him. The latch clacked in its notch and he pushed in the string.

There was no candlelight upstairs. He strode out savagely. “Get back, you, Jerry Fowler, and don’t come back or you will be the Lord’s own fool.”

He walked away.

“You hold to be a decent man. Leave out of her. Blast her, if she mocked you.”

The mill was quiet as an empty church; the dew was heavy on the grass.

“Go now, and don’t consider coming back.”