Of Time and the River (44 page)

When he got to the mill, he turned left along the road that went down by Spangler’s Run, crossed by the bridge below, and turned from the road into the wood-path on the other side. A child was standing in the path, and turned and went on ahead of him. In the wood the sunlight made swarming moths of light across the path and through the leafy tangle of the trees: the sunlight kept shifting and swarming on the child’s golden hair, and all around him were the sudden noises of the wood, the stir, the rustle, and the bullet thrum of wings, the cool broken sound of hidden water.

The wood got denser, darker as he went on and coming to a place where the path split away into two forks, Gant stopped, and turning to the child said, “Which one shall I take?” And the child did not answer him.

But someone was there in the wood before him. He heard footsteps on the path, and saw a footprint in the earth, and turning took the path where the footprint was and where it seemed he could hear someone walking.

And then, with the bridgeless instancy of dreams, it seemed to him that all of the bright green-gold around him in the wood grew dark and sombre, the path grew darker, and suddenly he was walking in a strange and gloomy forest, haunted by the brown and tragic light of dreams. The forest shapes of great trees rose around him, he could hear no bird-song now, even his own feet on the path were soundless, but he always thought he heard the sound of someone walking in the wood before him. He stopped and listened: the steps were muffled, softly thunderous; they seemed so near that he thought that he must catch up with the one he followed in another second, and then they seemed immensely far away, receding in the dark mystery of that gloomy wood. And again he stopped and listened, the footsteps faded, vanished, he shouted, no one answered. And suddenly he knew that he had taken the wrong path, that he was lost. And in his heart there was an immense and quiet sadness, and the dark light of the enormous wood was all around him; no birds sang.

XXXIII

Gant awoke suddenly and found himself looking straight up at Eliza, who was seated in a chair beside the bed.

“You were asleep,” she said quietly with a grave smile, looking at him in her direct and almost accusing fashion.

“Yes,” he said, breathing a little hoarsely, “what time is it?”

It was a few minutes before three o’clock in the morning. She looked at the clock and told him the time: he asked where Helen was.

“Why,” said Eliza quickly, “she’s right here in this hall room: I reckon she’s asleep, too. Said she was tired, you know, but that if you woke up and needed her to call her. Do you want me to get her?”

“No,” said Gant. “Don’t bother her. I guess she needs the rest, poor child. Let her sleep.”

“Yes,” said Eliza, nodding, “and that’s exactly what you must do, too, Mr. Gant. You try to go on back to sleep now,” she said coaxingly, “for that’s what we all need. There’s no medicine like sleep—as the fellow says, it’s Nature’s sovereign remedy,” said Eliza, with that form of sententiousness that she was very fond of— “so you go on, now, Mr. Gant, and get a good night’s sleep, and when you wake up in the morning, you’ll feel like a new man. That’s half the battle—if you can get your sleep, you’re already on the road to recovery.”

“No,” said Gant, “I’ve slept enough.”

He was breathing rather hoarsely and heavily and she asked him if he was comfortable and needed anything. He made no answer for a moment, and then muttered something under his breath that she could not hear plainly, but that sounded like “little boy.”

“Hah? What say? What is it, Mr. Gant?” Eliza said. “Little boy?” she said sharply, as he did not answer.

“Did you see him?” he said.

She looked at him for a moment with troubled eyes, then said:

“Pshaw, Mr. Gant, I guess you must have been dreaming.”

He did not answer, and for a moment there was no sound in the room but his breathing, hoarse, a little heavy. Then he muttered:

“Did someone come into the house?”

She looked at him sharply, inquiringly again, with troubled eyes:

“Hah? What say? Why, no, I think not,” she said doubtfully, “unless you may have heard Gilmer come in an’ go up to his room.”

And Gant was again silent for several moments, breathing a little heavily and hoarsely, his hands resting with an enormous passive strength upon the bed. Presently he said quietly:

“Where’s Bacchus?”

“Hah? Who’s that?” Eliza said sharply, in a startled kind of tone. “Bacchus? You mean Uncle Bacchus?”

“Yes,” said Gant.

“Why, pshaw, Mr. Gant!” cried Eliza laughing—for a startled moment she had wondered if “his mind was wanderin’,” but one glance at his quiet eyes, the tranquil sanity of his quiet tone, reassured her—

“Pshaw!” she said, putting one finger up to her broad nose-wing and laughing slyly. “You must have been havin’ queer dreams, for a fact!”

“Is he here?”

“Why, I’ll vow, Mr. Gant!” she cried again. “What on earth is in your mind? You know that Uncle Bacchus is way out West in Oregon— it’s been ten years since he came back home last—that summer of the reunion at Gettysburg.”

“Yes,” said Gant. “I remember now.”

And again he fell silent, staring upward in the semi-darkness, his hands quietly at rest beside him, breathing a little hoarsely, but without pain. Eliza sat in the chair watching him, her hands clasped loosely at her waist, her lips pursed reflectively, and a puzzled look in her eyes. “Now I wonder whatever put that in his mind?” she thought. “I wonder what made him think of Bacchus? Now his mind’s not wanderin’—that’s one thing sure. He knows what he’s doing just as well as I do—I reckon he must have dreamed it— that Bacchus was here—but that’s certainly a strange thing, that he should bring it up like this.”

He was so silent that she thought he might have gone to sleep again, he lay motionless with his eyes turned upward in the semi- darkness of the room, his hands immense and passive at his side. But suddenly he startled her again by speaking, a voice so quiet and low that he might have been talking to himself.

“Father died the year before the war,” he said, “when I was nine years old. I never got to know him very well. I guess Mother had a hard time of it. There were seven of us—and nothing but that little place to live on—and some of us too young to help her much— and George away at war. She spoke pretty hard to us sometimes— but I guess she had a hard time of it. It was a tough time for all of us,” he muttered, “I tell you what, it was.”

“Yes,” Eliza said, “I guess it was. I know, she told me—I talked to her, you know, the time we went there on our honeymoon—whew! what about it?” she shrieked faintly and put her finger up to her broad nose-wing with the same sly gesture—“it was all I could do to keep a straight face sometimes—why, you know, the way she had of talkin’—the expressions she used—oh! came right out with it, you know—sometimes I’d have to turn my head away so she wouldn’t see me laughin’—says, you know, ‘I was left a widow with seven children to bring up, but I never took charity from no one; as I told ‘em all, I’ve crawled under the dog’s belly all my life; now I guess I can get over its back.’”

“Yes,” said Gant with a faint grin. “Many’s the time I’ve heard her say that.”

“But she told it then, you know,” Eliza went on in explanatory fashion, “about your father and how he’d done hard labour on a farm all his life and died—well, I reckon you’d call it consumption.”

“Yes,” said Gant. “That was it.”

“And,” Eliza said reflectively, “I never asked—of course, I didn’t want to embarrass her—but I reckon from what she said, he may have been—well, I suppose you might say he was a drinkin’ man.”

“Yes,” said Gant, “I guess he was.”

“And I know she told it on him,” said Eliza, laughing again, and passing one finger slyly at the corner of her broad nose-wing, “how he went to town that time—to Brant’s Mill, I guess it was—and how she was afraid he’d get to drinkin’, and she sent you and Wes along to watch him and to see he got home again—and how he met up with some fellers there and, sure enough, I guess he started drinkin’ and stayed away too long—and then, I reckon he was afraid of what she’d say to him when he got back—and that was when he bought the clock—it’s that very clock upon the mantel, Mr. Gant—but that was when he got the clock, all right—I guess he thought it would pacify her when she started out to scold him for gettin’ drunk and bein’ late.”

“Yes,” said Gant, who had listened without moving, staring at the ceiling, and with a faint grin printed at the corners of his mouth, “well do I remember: that was it, all right.”

“And then,” Eliza went on, “he lost the way comin’ home—it had been snowin’, and I reckon it was getting dark, and he had been drinkin’—and instead of turnin’ in on the road that went down by your place he kept goin’ on until he passed Jake Schaefer’s farm— an’ I guess Wes and you, poor child, kept follerin’ where he led, thinkin’ it was all right—and when he realized his mistake he said he was tired an’ had to rest a while and—I’ll vow! to think he’d go and do a thing like that,” said Eliza, laughing again—“he lay right down in the snow, sir, with the clock beside him—and went sound to sleep.”

“Yes,” said Gant, “and the clock was broken.”

“Yes,” Eliza said, “she told me about that too—and how she heard you all come creepin’ in real quiet an’ easy-like about nine o’clock that night, when she and all the children were in bed—an’ how she could hear him whisperin’ to you and Wes to be quiet—an’ how she heard you all come creepin’ up the steps—and how he came tip-toein’ in real easy-like an’ laid the clock down on the bed—I reckon the glass had been broken out of it—hopin’ she’d see it when she woke up in the morning an’ wouldn’t scold him then for stayin’ out—”

“Yes,” said Gant, still with the faint attentive grin, “and then the clock began to strike.”

“Whew-w!” cried Eliza, putting her finger underneath her broad nose-wing—“I know she had to laugh about it when she told it to me—she said that all of you looked so sheepish when the clock began to strike that she didn’t have the heart to scold him.”

And Gant, grinning faintly again, emitted a faint rusty cackle that sounded like “E’God!” and said: “Yes, that was it. Poor fellow.”

“But to think,” Eliza went on, “that he would have no more sense than to do a thing like that—to lay right down there in the snow an’ go to sleep with you two children watchin’ him. And I know how she told it, how she questioned you and Wes next day, and I reckon started in to scold you for not takin’ better care of him, and how you told her, ‘Well, Mother, I thought that it would be all right. I kept steppin’ where he stepped, I thought he knew the way.’ And said she didn’t have the heart to scold you after that—poor child, I reckon you were only eight or nine years old, and boy-like thought you’d follow in your father’s footsteps and that everything would be all right.”

“Yes,” said Gant, with the faint grin again, “I kept stretchin’ my legs to put my feet down in his tracks—it was all I could do to keep up with him. . . . Ah, Lord,” he said, and in a moment said in a faint low voice, “how well I can remember it. That was just the winter before he died.”

“And you’ve had that old clock ever since,” Eliza said. “That very clock upon the mantel, sir—at least, you’ve had it ever since I’ve known you, and I reckon you had it long before that—for I know you told me how you brought it South with you. And that clock must be all of sixty or seventy years old—if it’s a day.”

“Yes,” said Gant, “it’s all of that.”

And again he was silent, and lay so still and motionless that there was no sound in the room except his faint and laboured breathing, the languid stir of the curtains in the cool night breeze, and the punctual tocking of the old wooden clock. And presently, when she thought that he might have gone off to sleep again, he spoke, in the same remote and detached voice as before:

“Eliza,”—he said—and at the sound of that unaccustomed word, a name he had spoken only twice in forty years—her white face and her worn brown eyes turned toward him with the quick and startled look of an animal—“Eliza,” he said quietly, “you have had a hard life with me, a hard time. I want to tell you that I’m sorry.”

And before she could move from her white stillness of shocked surprise, he lifted his great right hand and put it gently down across her own. And for a moment she sat there bolt upright, shaken, frozen, with a look of terror in her eyes, her heart drained of blood, a pale smile trembling uncertainly and foolishly on her lips. Then she tried to withdraw her hand with a clumsy movement, she began to stammer with an air of ludicrous embarrassment, she bridled, saying—“Aw-w, now, Mr. Gant. Well, now, I reckon,”—and suddenly these few simple words of regret and affection did what all the violence, abuse, drunkenness and injury of forty years had failed to do. She wrenched her hand free like a wounded creature, her face was suddenly contorted by that grotesque and pitiable grimace of sorrow that women have had in moments of grief since the beginning of time, and digging her fist into her closed eye quickly with the pathetic gesture of a child, she lowered her head and wept bitterly.

“It was a hard time, Mr. Gant,” she whispered, “a hard time, sure enough. . . . It wasn’t all the cursin’ and the drinkin’—I got used to that. . . . I reckon I was only an ignorant sort of girl when I met you and I guess,” she went on with a pathetic and unconscious humour, “I didn’t know what married life was like . . . but I could have stood the rest of it . . . the bad names an’ all the things you called me when I was goin’ to have another child . . . but it was what you said when Grover died . . . accusin’ me of bein’ responsible for his death because I took the children to St. Louis to the Fair—” and at the words as if an old and lacerated wound had been reopened raw and bleeding, she wept hoarsely, harshly, bitterly—“that was the worst time that I had—sometimes I prayed to God that I would not wake up—he was a fine boy, Mr. Gant, the best I had—like the write-up in the paper said he had the sense an’ judgment of one twice his age . . . an’ somehow it had grown a part of me, I expected him to lead the others—when he died it seemed like everything was gone . . . an’ then to have you say that I had—” her voice faltered to a whisper, stopped: with a pathetic gesture she wiped the sleeve of her old frayed sweater across her eyes and, already ashamed of her tears, said hastily: