Читать книгу The Sojourner - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - Страница 6

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The Wilsons were plain people. There was a large houseful of them, good natured, hard working, earthy. From much of the country stock the sons went on to become lawyers, physicians, business men, teachers, but the Wilson boys and men were unthinkable as anything but farmers, and the girls would always marry men of the soil. They were a solid, continuing breed. Their red barns were impressive, the house nondescript, but bright with white paint and masses of old-fashioned flower beds. The interior was divided into many small rooms, inartistically and comfortably furnished, cluttered with Wilsons and the paraphernalia of the men’s boots and mackinaws, the women’s sewing and canning and preserving. Their table was famous even in a land of plenty, laden three times a day with half a dozen meats, fruits, vegetables swimming in cream and butter, pickles and jellies and preserves, endless pastries, heaped together for handy self-helping like a mediaeval hunting feast. For all the food they stowed away with such cheer and relish, the Wilsons were runty. Pa and Ma Wilson were a pair of wrinkled hickory nuts, the boys were small and wiry, only the girls profited by the family physique. They were merry little things with dozens of beaux, fresh and appealing until age and childbearing should turn them gaunt and withered as locust shells. Nellie at twenty was the prettiest of the lot. She was diminutive and dainty, with plump little breasts, apple round, apple firm, an impudent short nose, firm, pointed chin and dimpled mouth, eyes the blue of wild chicory, and gold-chestnut hair that rippled to her shoulders in round finger curls. She was an incorrigible minx and a mischief.

Amelia Linden condescended to the Wilsons. They were decent enough, she admitted, if too much given to hilarity, undeniably prosperous, but the men were not “gentlemen,” the women were not “ladies.” She called them “common,” and so they were. Nellie had been Benjamin’s girl since she was sixteen. It had approached not quite a scandal that they had not married. Amelia had handled the situation with a rare caution. Her early sarcasm failing to keep Benjamin away from the girl, she had looked uneasily to the future. She would detest any woman who claimed him, yet she was terrified lest by her disapproval she alienate him. She encouraged him in his prowlings elsewhere, slipping him money for trips to Peytonville and Trent, yet when he returned, he would be smoothing his hair with a wet brush like a pleased tom cat washing his fur, and always off down the road two miles again to Nellie. She had decided shrewdly that if it was Nellie he must bring home as bride, she was safer with such a little snippet than with a wife more worthy of him. His infatuation with the pretty face and tiny round figure would pass, and she herself, offering no criticism save an occasional significant lifted eyebrow, would be entrenched and waiting, a constant contrast, so that he should inevitably turn more and more to the superior woman, in appreciation and relief.

Ase found himself increasingly haunted by thoughts of Nellie. He had not seen her since his father’s funeral two months ago. He drove his mother to Peytonville to church on Sundays, but the Wilsons attended church in another direction. There had been no meeting of the Grange, and the Wilsons and Lindens, as families, had never exchanged casual visits. Tim McCarthy had reported that the sweet Nellie had been moping, but the lads were crowding in again, like yearlings trying the fence, he said, now the big bull was gone to other pastures.

Ase had tried to put out of his mind Ben’s words, “Better marry Nellie in the spring.” He was uncertain how to take them. Ben had often teased him about his mute admiration of Nellie. The words might have been only another jest. Again, they might have been intended as a seal on the finality of his leaving. Since Ben was without subtlety, Ase came slowly over the weeks to the belief that his brother had meant them literally, meant as well that the miracle was possible.

The thought of Nellie Wilson began to creep in on him as irresistibly as the sun reaching into dark crannies. If he might have Nellie for his wife, he would be cold no longer, no more alone. He dreamed of her by night and awakened with his heart pounding. He acknowledged now what he had ignored through loyalty to Ben, that Nellie was his true love and always had been. Because of Nellie, hidden away, smothered, in his heart, he had turned back from the hemlocks with the gypsy girl.

The time was February. Something was supposed to happen then, what was it? He remembered. Ben was to have taken Nellie to the midwinter dance of the Grange. He frowned at his stupidity. He should have asked weeks ago if he might replace his brother as her escort. She would have accepted another by now. He could not picture Nellie as waiting. Not even waiting for Ben. If she refused his invitation face to face, laughed at him, he knew that he would stumble away from her, damned and lost. After his mother had gone to bed he wrote laboriously by lamp light, and sent the formal note by Tim McCarthy.

“Asahel Linden requests the pleasure of the company of Miss Nellie Wilson at the Grange dance, if not too late in asking.”

McCarthy brought the answer in her round childish writing.

“Miss Nellie Wilson thinks it’s high time Mr. Asahel Linden was asking.”