Читать книгу The Mandrake Root - Martha Ostenso - Страница 6

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Lydie had walked through the thickened darkness beyond the barns to where the hill sloped down to the sheep pasture. She sat down on the stone rim of the old well which Andrew meant to repair as soon as he got time. It deserved to be kept in style, he said, just as much as the old log house that stood back there in the orchard. It was here the Stenes had lived in the days that only old Guri Kvam could recall. Soon even she would pass, and all that she remembered now would pass with her. The day would come, Lydie thought to herself, when everything the Stenes had ever known would crumble and cease to be—everything except the dark land and the bright sky, and the eternal, secret and inscrutable forces that worked between.

Meanwhile, living would go on. Andrew would patch the roof on the old Stene cabin, he would trim the trees in the old Stene orchard. Just yesterday he had said something about building some sort of cupola above this well head and Lydie could train wild grapes to grow over it. It would be a pretty spot, and the well was useful even now, since it was closer to the vegetable garden than the pump beneath the windmill.

Andrew’s plans were so sturdy, so hopeful and clear, in the face of all his disappointments and difficulties. They were a strong, clean house built over himself and her, Lydie, his wife.

She trailed her hand over the wet stone ledge of the well. She stared down across the pasture, through the almost impenetrable iron-colored night, and lifted her face to the slanting rain. The rain would be falling on the little river down there under the hill; it would be falling on the swamp, east of the river, where the brown velvet cat-tails always withstood so long the quiet-calling death of summer. But their stout courage would be for naught. Only a few days now, and river and marsh would be frozen and silent.

Lydie got up from the stone ledge. There was nothing to do but go back and set the table for morning breakfast, before going to bed. It meant less haste when the men were getting ready for the day’s work on the farm.