Читать книгу The Sojourner - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - Страница 8

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The sun rose behind Ase as he drove home. The faint warmth touched the nape of his neck, reminding him of the feeling there of Nellie’s mittens. The snow-piled roofs of the red barns were rosy. The large white Linden house was snow-capped, too, the drifts were piled to the windows. It would be not much longer aloof and bare, unwelcoming.

He changed his clothes to do the morning chores. He moved quietly, not to disturb his mother. Since Benjamin had gone, she slept late, making no pretense at preparing breakfast. He built a fire in the kitchen range and put on the coffee pot and the double boiler of oatmeal. The handling of the milk and cream and butter had devolved on him.

He went to the dusky cellar and lit a lamp there. The Jersey cream was nearly an inch thick in the wide shallow milk pans. He skimmed most of it into an earthen crock, saving out a pint pitcherful for table use. He poured the skimmed milk into a bucket for the hogs. In the kitchen he rinsed the pans in the zinc sink fed by a rain-water cistern pump. He pushed the bubbling coffee pot to the back of the range. He took the pig slops in one hand and the clean milk bucket in the other and went to the barn for the milking. He fed the stock and returned to the house, to strain the foaming milk into yesterday’s clean pans, and carried them carefully down to the cellar shelves. The hanging shelves were planned for family quantities of canned fruits and pickles and jellies, but they were almost empty. A jar of preserved quinces would have been palatable for a winter morning’s breakfast.

The sun poured through the east window between range and sink. He laid a red and white checkered cloth on the kitchen table and set two places. He hoped Nellie would continue to have breakfast in the kitchen in cold weather. The warmth of the range, the crackling of the burning wood, were pleasant. Amelia was still sleeping. He ate a dish of oatmeal with crumbled maple sugar and spoonfuls of the thick yellow cream while the bacon fried in an iron skillet. He set one plate of bacon in the warmer for his mother. To his own he added eggs poached in the fat. He made himself toast. The butter dish in the pantry was empty and he went down-cellar again for a fresh crock. Something was the matter with his coffee. Even the golden cream failed to turn it to a pleasing color, it was gray and unsavory.

He washed his dishes and the morning’s milk pans and bucket, scalding them with boiling water from the kettle, and set the milk things on a shelf in the woodshed. He brushed his crumbs from the table and left the wire toast grill handy for his mother, with eggs ready for soft-boiling in a small saucepan. The barn needed cleaning, the sheep were nearly out of fodder, but these chores could be done later. He went upstairs to his icy bedroom, undressed to his underwear, and got into his cold bed. His head was thick but he could not sleep after all. There was too much joy to be savored, and with it, too many plans to be made, the problem of Amelia to be mulled over. He had hoped she would join him for breakfast, so that in leisure over their coffee he might give her his news and try to answer whatever might be her inevitable objections. She had disparaged Nellie to him and to his father, well out of Ben’s hearing, but she had accepted her for Ben’s sake. If Nellie would do for Ben, she would be not only suitable for him, but likely to be considered too good for him, as was his own opinion. Yet Amelia had approved his taking Nellie to the dance as a means of keeping her safe for his brother. He decided there was nothing for it but to convince his mother that Ben would not be claiming Nellie, ever, because he would not be coming home at all. He drowsed, imagining Nellie close beside him, and went sound asleep at last.

When he awakened it was two o’clock in the afternoon. He pulled on his clothing and went downstairs. He found a note on the kitchen table from Amelia. It was her sewing circle day and one of the members had stopped in, driving by, fortunately, as her son had failed to appear to hitch the horse and sleigh for her. He wondered at her faithfulness to the circle, which sewed for foreign missions, for she was neither sociable nor friendly with neighbors or fellow church-goers, nor a good seamstress, nor interested in the heathen poor. Actually, she had joined a group composed of the simplest of farm women, for to them she was both queen and oracle. She returned from the luncheon meetings richly fed of belly and of ego.

Ase made himself a light meal and ate absently. He washed up and swept the kitchen floor. He brought the accumulated cream from the cellar and turned it into the wooden butter-churn. The faint sourness had a clean, fresh smell. He set the churn a few feet from the range to warm a little. The clock struck three. He was restless. The barn work was not too pressing. There would be time to walk the two miles east to see Nellie before the evening chores. He wanted to set a wedding date, he wanted to prepare her for his mother. He hesitated. Half at least of the large Wilson family would be sitting about the house on a cold winter afternoon. There would be jesting and no privacy at all.

He heard footsteps on the gravel path, lighter than his mother’s, and then Nellie’s voice, calling to her dog. It seemed for a moment that he heard these sounds only in his daydream. If not, perhaps she was not coming here, but was passing on her way to some other place and person.

She called, “Ase! Wake up!” and beat with her little fists on the paneled door.

Shep was barking with excitement, as though his mistress were calling to a man in danger in a house on fire. Ase was too slow to open the door to her. She was in the room, the dog delighted behind her. She wore her red hooded cape and had a basket on her arm. It occurred to him that she was Little Red Riding Hood, with the wolf transposed, because of her, into this amiable sheep-dog.

He said, “Nellie. I’ve been thinking about you.”

She took off her cape and shook imaginary dust or snow from it and laid it over a chair in a curiously domestic manner, as though the chair, the room, the house, were already hers.

“You always just sit and think.”

She lifted the lid from her basket and handed him a plate covered with a napkin.

“I saw your mother go by with Mrs. Barnes, so I made you a pie.”

He was deeply touched. He took the plate, staring at it.

“Well, open it up, Ase. Maybe you don’t like pumpkin.”

He removed the napkin. The plate held only a mound of flour.

“Oh, Ase, look what I’ve done. Brought you the wrong plate. Now I remember, I just sat and thought about making you a pie and then forgot all about doing it. Well. But I guess your mother has all kinds of good pies and you wouldn’t want mine, anyway.”

This was surely malice, for Amelia Linden was famous for her distaste for cooking, for the execrable products that resulted when she did finally turn to stove and oven. Nellie laughed. She swooped into her basket and brought out the true pie, golden-brown and redolent.

“You should see your face, Ase. Oh my—.”

Her laughter was that of a child, high-keyed and delirious.

He smiled sheepishly. He should have known this was another of her jokes. Yet he wanted to turn her over his knee and spank her. She had raised his spirits so high, then dropped them down again. But after all, she had indeed brought him a pie. He could not tell which was honest, the jest or the gift. Since she was Nellie, perhaps both.

He said, “I’ll eat it for supper.”

She looked critically around the room. She had not been in the house since the home funeral service for Ase’s father. A small couch stood near the bay window. She sat down and patted the seat beside her, for him to join her. He put his arms around her. She gave him a quick cool kiss and pushed him away.

“Never mind that now. I saw a chance to be alone with you to make our plans.”

He said, “I’d have come to you, but your family—”

She laughed.

“I know. Well, don’t you think the sooner the better?”

He was stirred that she was as anxious as he.

“Oh, Nellie, I do.”

“I can be ready in a couple of weeks. I’d like to be married at home and then come straight here. All right with you?”

He reached for her in answer but she stood up impatiently and walked around the room, studying it. She frowned.

“I’ve got to do something with this awful house. I’d like to get it fixed up and feel settled by April. I want to spend most of my time outdoors at planting time. I want a big garden. That little thing you’ve had is a disgrace, not enough stuff for the table, let alone canning for winter. I want to start flowerbeds and get things growing at the front of the house, anyway. It looks like a barn without any plants or shrubbery.”

She sat beside him again and chuckled.

“Think I’m going to have to fight your mother to do things my way?”

He took her small capable hands in his big ones.

He said gravely. “She won’t mind anything about the house or garden. But Nellie—.”

She looked at him sharply.

“What’s the matter? You don’t think she’ll make a fuss about our marrying, do you?”

He nodded in misery.

“Because of Ben, I suppose.” She was thoughtful. “Why? Ben walked out on me.”

“She won’t believe he isn’t coming back.”

“Oh. I’m supposed to turn into an old woman waiting for him, just in case her precious takes the notion to show up and claim his property. Well, he won’t, and I won’t. She can go to the devil.”

She was adorable, he thought, in her flushed anger. It was part of her vitality, a warm, sputtering, healthy explosion unlike the cold venom of his mother’s rages. He stroked her hands.

He longed to tell her of his mother, to enlist her understanding and her pity, yet would not betray one woman to the other. He thought again with pain of the hurt they must inflict on her, if she were to accept their union.

He said, “You’d better tell her what Ben told you about his going.”

“I’ll tell her, all right. He said one reason he was clearing out was to get away from her. Said she drove him crazy.”

“Nellie, no.”

“It wouldn’t kill her. The old dame’s tough as hickory.”

“Please, Nellie.”

She laughed suddenly and patted his arm.

“Don’t worry. I’ll behave. She won’t raise half the hell as if it had been Ben. I’m getting a good farm and a good husband and I’m going to make a good job of it.”

Her matter-of-factness made love-making impossible. She relaxed against him with the bland ease of a kitten that has had its supper and is ready for a warm lap, but chooses not to be caressed. She allowed him to hold her, but slapped away his hand when his fingers strayed to the fascination of her curls. She had enough of snuggling shortly, and left the couch to prowl through the dining-room to the kitchen. He followed at her heels, and Shep the dog followed, both of them watching her in anxious adoration. She gave her verdict on the kitchen. A good scrubbing, fresh varnish, ruffled red and white gingham curtains at the window, some bright braided rag rugs on the bare floor, would make it passable. She touched the churn.

“Your mother’s let the cream get too warm. Her butter’ll be soft.”

“I did it.”

She looked at him, moved the churn in front of a chair and began plunging the wooden dasher up and down. The butter came, too quickly, she said, and soft, as she had predicted. She asked for cold well water from the outside pump, worked the butter in a bowl, asked for a mould, but there was none. She packed the butter in a crock and sent him down-cellar with it. She washed and scalded the churn, speaking with disapproval of the kitchen furnishings. She poured glasses of the fresh butter-flecked buttermilk and lifted her eyebrows when no doughnuts or cookies were to be found to serve with it.

“No wonder you’re all bones. You don’t get enough to eat.”

He was enchanted with her bustling domesticity, her air of kitchen command. She belonged here already. She glanced at the clock.

“I ought to be going, but I want to have it out with your mother and get it over with.”

Amelia came near sunset. She walked through the front rooms, removing bonnet and gloves, and stopped short in the kitchen doorway. Ase rose to greet her.

Nellie said, “Good evening, Mother Linden.”

Amelia stared.

“What are you doing here?”

“Visiting.”

“So I see. Since when does a young woman call on a young man?”

“When they’re engaged.”

Amelia said, “Asahel, suppose you give me a reasonable explanation of all this. I’m not in a mood for this girl’s flippancy.”

His throat was dry. He swallowed. He looked imploringly at his mother and then at Nellie. The most gracious and soothing of words, even if he could find them, would not be adequate.

Nellie said, “Speak up, Ase.”

He said, “Nellie and I are going to be married, Mother.”

He saw the storm move in on her. She would kill him with a shaft of lightning if she could. He braced himself against her eyes, her voice.

“You traitor. You miserable skulking oaf. You trip over your own feet and then plot to fill your brother’s shoes. Behind his back, you wait until his back is turned, you sneak in and steal what’s his, like a weasel.”

Nellie said mildly, “I’m hardly a chicken on a roost, Mother Linden.”

Amelia turned. Ase wished Nellie had not spoken. He had long borne the fury, could bear it now, he had hoped to spare her.

“Perhaps this treachery was your idea, Miss?”

“Actually, it was Ben’s.”

“What are you talking about? He’ll expect you to be waiting for him when he comes home. Don’t think I want you for him, you aren’t fit to wash his feet, but he chose you, I was ready to accept you because it’s what he wanted.”

Nellie’s eyes were blue fire. She walked close to the dark woman. A small fierce hawk faced a coiled snake in deadly battle.

“Now listen to me. I’m going to marry Ase and you’re going to accept that, too. Ben’s gone for good. He told me so. He told Ase so. The last thing he said to each of us was for us to marry. Ben didn’t want me for keeps. Ase does. I’m Ben’s nice little present to Ase. It just happens it suits me. It suits me fine. Ben won’t be back. Do you understand?”

Amelia gripped the back of a chair. Her knuckles were white. Her hands went limp and she sat down slowly.

“No,” she said.

Nellie reached for her red cape and threw it around her shoulders. She snatched her empty basket. The dog Shep came from behind the range where he had slunk uneasily.

She said to Amelia, “I don’t intend to quarrel with you, either. We’re going to live pleasantly. I’m going to have things comfortable and nice.”

Amelia said hoarsely, “You can’t come here.”

“Oh yes, I can.”

“You can’t live in my house. If you do this thing, this betrayal of my Benjamin, you can’t live in my house. You’ll have to go to the cabin.”

“I will not.”

Nellie set down the basket and spoke more patiently.

“Look here, Mother Linden, I know you’re upset, but you’ve got to face facts. Now you hate to keep house and I like it. You like good food and you don’t lift a finger to cook. I’m going to set the best table in the township. It makes sense for me to take over and run things.”

Amelia dabbed with her handkerchief at dry lips.

“I’ll move to the cabin myself.”

“All right, move there. A good idea. You can eat with us and not have any responsibility at all. You’ll find you’ll like it.”

She laid her hand on Shep’s head.

“Come on, boy. Be dark before we get home.”

Ase said, “Wait, Nellie, I’ll hitch up.”

“No, thanks. I’ll walk off the rest of my mad.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the cheek. She touched Amelia’s cold hand.

“It won’t be so bad, Mother Linden, once you get used to it.”

“When is this happy event to take place?”

“I told Ase, the sooner the better. Two weeks. Good-night.”

She was out of the house in a swirl of cape and curls. He heard her swift feet over the crunched snow and the joyful bark of her dog. He wanted to hurry after her. He started for the door.

Amelia said, “Asahel!”

Her voice was hysterical.

“She said the sooner the better. Don’t you see? She’s carrying Benjamin’s child.”

He felt a sick numbing. He was mixed in a nightmare and could not move nor escape. She twisted her hands together. Her words came in a rush.

“She tried to trap him. He doesn’t know, of course. He wouldn’t have gone if he’d known. She disgusted him and he went away. She found she’d sprung the trap, but then he was gone. So now she’s trapped you.”

He shook his head like a tortured bear.

He recognized in anguish that it was possible.

“It isn’t true, Mother. But if it was—I’d want her.”

More than ever, he thought, more than ever, to protect her, to protect his brother, even, the child.

“You’d take his leftovers? You’d take up where he left off?”

“Yes, Mother.”

The clock ticked in the silence. The range had not been lit, nor the sitting-room stove, and the house was chill. He waited.

Amelia said in a low voice, “If I ever needed proof you were born a fool, this is it. Very well. I wash my hands of it. You may make your accounting to Benjamin. He would prefer to give his own name to his child, even by that hussy. You’ll have a pretty time explaining your presumption when he returns.”

She gathered her wraps and went to her room.

He sat thinking. The picture was clear and without offense. Nellie and Benjamin, volatile alike of nature, had struck a spontaneous fire, and Ben had certainly possessed her. She was not with child, Ase knew. She was honest enough to have told him. He knew, too, with horror, that his mother had committed herself, almost insanely, to the conviction of her eldest’s return, and would twist facts ruthlessly to fit that conviction. He wished he might have had Nellie to wife free of the dark sucking bog through which his slow feet must move, across which his wordless thoughts must find their way.

He was late getting to his chores. He milked and fed the stock by lantern light. He strained the milk in the kitchen and put it away. He washed his hands and face, and then his hands again, as though something more unclean than the good animal smell might be washed away. He was not hungry, but he looked about for materials for a supper. In his absence at the barn, Amelia had been in the kitchen. She had made herself a pot of tea and had eaten a large wedge of Nellie’s pumpkin pie.