Читать книгу Hare and Tortoise - Pierre Coalfleet - Страница 7

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LOUISE had wondered why Katie Salter had not appeared to do the weekly washing. In the light of a report brought by the mail carrier the reason was now too frightfully clear. Katie’s son, a boy of twelve, had accidentally killed himself while examining an old shot-gun.

Keble was sitting at his table filling in a cheque. Louise had been silently watching him. “I’ll give this to Sweet to take to Katie on his way back to the Valley,” he said. “It will cover expenses and more.”

“Give it to me instead, dear. I’ll take it when I go this afternoon.”

“Oh! Then what about our trip to the Dam with the Browns?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to be excused. I must do what I can for Katie. She has nobody.”

“She has the neighbors. Mrs. what’s her name, Dixon, is taking care of her. Besides, all the women for miles around flock together for an occasion of that sort. It will be rather ghastly.”

“Especially for Katie. That’s why I have to go.”

“Oh, Lord! if you feel you must. I’ll come with you.”

She rose from her chair and picked up the cheque he had left on the edge of the table. She had thought it all out within a few seconds, and in none of the pictures she had conjured up could she find a place for her husband. The fastidiousness which persisted through all his efforts to be “plain folks” could not be reconciled with the stark details of the tragedy ten miles down the road.

“No, Keble dear,” she replied with a firmness she knew he wouldn’t resist. More than once she had secretly wished he would resist her firmness, for every yielding on his part seemed to increase her habit of being firm, and that was a habit that bade fair to petrify the amiable little gaieties and pliancies of her nature. “You know you’ve been anxious about the Dam. It won’t do to put off the trip again. Katie will understand your absence, and she will feel comforted to have at least one dude present. You know I’m considered a dude, too, since my marriage. Nowadays my old friends address me as stiffly as we used to address the schoolma’am. ... It’s strange what trifles determine the manners of this world.”

“Was our marriage such a trifle?”

Louise came out of her reflective mood and smiled, then said, as if just discovering it, “Why, yes, when you think of all the big things there are.”

“What about Billy’s death? Is that a big thing?”

“A big thing to Katie, just as our being together is a big thing to us.”

“What a horrid way of putting it!”

“... Marriage is being together, though.”

He let that pass and returned to his point. “A big thing to Katie, but negligible in the light of something else, I suppose you mean?”

“Exactly.”

“In the light of what, for example?”

“I don’t quite know, dear. I’ll tell you when I’ve had time to philosophize it out.”

She kissed him and went out to the saddle shed.

Sundown knew his mistress’s moods and decided on an easy trot for the first few miles of the route, which lay through groves of pine and yellowing cottonwood. Eventually the road emerged into a broad stretch of dust-green sage perforated with gopher holes, and Louise set a diagonal course toward the stony river bed which had to be forded. A flock of snow-white pelicans sailed lazily overhead, following the stream toward favorite fishing pools. A high line of mountains, pale green, violet, and buff, merged into the hazy sky. The heat was oppressive and ominous.

For an hour not one human being crossed her path. The only sign of habitation had been the villainous dog and three or four horses of a not too prosperous homestead owned by one of Keble’s horse wranglers. All along the road she had been preoccupied by the tone of her parting talk with Keble, vaguely chagrined that her husband seemed to deprecate her identifying herself too closely with the life of the natives. Strangely enough he sought to identify himself with them, while, presumably, expecting her to identify herself with the class from which he had sprung, as though, gradually, she would have portentous new duties to undertake.

She couldn’t help dreading the prospect. Not that she shrank from duties,—on the contrary; it was the menacing gentility of it all that subdued her. When Keble had first come to them, disgusted with the old order, he had persuaded her that the younger generation,—his English generation,—had learned an epoch-making lesson, that it had earned its right to ignore tradition and to build the future according to its own iconoclastic logic. He had determined to create his own life, rather than passively accept the life that had been awaiting him over there since birth. She had thrilled with pride at having been chosen partner in such a daring scheme. Only to find that, in insidious ways, perhaps unconsciously, Keble was buttressing himself with the paraphernalia of the old order which he professed to repudiate. She could love Keble without gloating over his blue prints and his catalogues of prize cattle, his nineteenth century poets, and his eighteenth century courtliness. The natives might gape at her luxurious bathroom fixtures and other marvels that were beginning to arrive in packing-cases at the Witney railway station. She had almost no possessive instinct, and certainly no ambition to be mistress of the finest estate in the province. Her most clearly defined ambition was to be useful,—useful to herself, and thereby, in some vague but effective way, to her generation. Her father, for all his obscurity, was to her notion more useful than Keble. Wherever Keble went he drove a fair bargain: took something and gave something in return. Wherever the little physician went he left healing, courage, cheerfulness, and in return took, from some source close to the heart of life, the energy and will to give more.

She dismounted to open the gate of the Dixon yard and led Sundown past a meagre field of wheat, past straggling beds of onions and potatoes, towards a small unpainted house which struck her as the neglected wife of the big, scrupulously cared-for barn. Two harnessed farm wagons were standing before it, and a dirty touring car. A group of men were lounging near the woodshed chewing tobacco with a Sunday manner, and some small boys, bare-legged, were playing a discreet, enforcedly subdued game of tag. Two saddled horses were hitched to the fence, to which she led Sundown.

One of the Dixon children had run indoors to announce her advent, and as she stepped into the kitchen she was met by a woman dressed in black cotton and motioned into the adjoining room,—a combination of parlor and bedroom,—where two or three other women were sewing together strips of white cheese-cloth. All eyes turned to her.

The walls were covered with newspaper, designed to prevent draughts. There was a rust-stained print of Queen Victoria and a fashion plate ten years out of date. At the two tiny windows blossomless geranium stalks planted in tomato tins made a forlorn pattern. The centre of the room was occupied by a rough box in which lay a powder-scarred little form clad in a coquettish “sailor suit” of cheese-cloth.

Louise drew near and looked wonderingly at the yellowish-white, purple-flecked face and hideously exposed teeth of the boy who had a few days since run errands for her, and who had planned to grow up and “drive the mail.”

The women expected her to weep, and in anticipation began to sniffle.

“At what time is the burial?” she asked, dry-eyed.

“As soon as we can git this here covering made. We’ve had to do everything pretty quick. We can’t keep him long.”

Louise shuddered and was turning away when she remembered the flowers in her hand,—dahlias and inappropriate, but the only flowers to be had, the only flowers on the scene,—and placed them in the coffin, with an odd little pat, as if to reassure Billy. Then she threaded a needle and set to work with the others.

When all the strips were sewn together and gathered, they were nailed to the boards and to the cover of the coffin. Perspiration rolled from the forehead of Mr. Dixon, and his embarrassment at having to make so much noise caused him from time to time to spit on the floor.

The sound of hammering stirred Katie’s drugged imagination, and overhead thin wails began to arise. With the continued pounding the lamentations increased in volume, and presently the sound of moving chairs could be heard, followed by indistinct consolations and footsteps on the uncarpeted stairs. The door burst open, and Katie lurched in, her face twisted and swollen behind a crooked veil. Clawing away the man with the hammer, she threw herself across the box. A long strand of greyish-red hair escaped from under a dusty hat and brushed against the redder hair of the boy.

It was some time before Katie could be drawn away. Finally, with a renewed burst of sobbing she let herself be led by Louise into a corner of the kitchen. Mixed with her sobs were incoherent statements. “It was for his health,” Katie was trying to tell Louise, “I brought him up here. And I was workin’ so hard, only for his schoolin’.”

Louise kept peering anxiously out of doors. Black clouds had gathered, and a treacherous little breeze had begun to stir the discarded pieces of cheese-cloth which she could see on the floor through the open door. A tree in the yard rustled, as if sighing in relief at a change from the accumulated heat of days.

After long delays the time arrived for the fastening down of the lid. To everyone’s surprise, and thanks largely to Louise’s tact, Katie allowed the moment to pass as if in a stupor. The coffin was placed in one of the farm wagons, and a soiled quilt thrown over it. The outer box was lifted upon the second wain, and served as a seat for the men and boys in the gathering. Katie and the women were installed in the dirty motor, which was to lead the way. And Louise, unstrapping her rain-cape, mounted Sundown and galloped ahead to open the gate.

As the clumsy procession filed past her, the clouds broke, and a deluge of hailstones beat against them, followed by sheets of water into which it was difficult to force the horses. It persisted during the whole journey toward the mound which was recognized as a graveyard, although no one but Rosie Dixon and an unknown tramp had ever been interred there.

On the approach of the bedraggled cortège two men in shirtsleeves and overalls, grasping shovels, came from under the shelter of a dripping tree to indicate the halting place. Louise dismounted at once and led Katie to a seat on some planks that rested near the grave. Mrs. Dixon, a glass of spirits of ammonia in her hand, pointed out Rosie’s resting place and for a moment transposed the object of her sorrow.

The grave proved too narrow for the outer box, and there was another long wait on the wet planks while the grave-diggers shoveled and took measurements, with muttered advice and expletives. The rain had abated. A mongrel who had followed them ran from one to another, and yelped when some one attempted to chasten him.

At length the box splashed into place, scraping shrilly against projecting pebbles, and the assembly drew near to assist or watch the lowering of the white cheese-cloth box. Katie was reviving for another paroxysm.

With a shock Louise discovered that they were preparing to put the cover in place without a sign of a religious ceremony.

“Is there no one here to take charge of the service?” she inquired.

The man with the shovel replied for the others. “You see, Mrs. Eveley, Mr. Boots is away from the Valley. We couldn’t get a parson from Witney. We thought perhaps somebody would offer to say a prayer like.”

To herself she was saying that not even her father could let poor Billy be buried so casually.

“Let me take charge,” she offered, with only the vaguest notion of what she was going to do.

Mrs. Dixon took her place beside Katie, and Louise proceeded to the head of the grave, making on her breast the sign her mother had secretly taught her.

“My dear friends,” she commenced. “We poor human beings have so little use for our souls that we turn them over to pastors and priests for safe keeping, till some emergency such as the present. In French there is a proverb which says: it is better to deal with God direct than with his saints. If we had acquired the habit of doing so, we shouldn’t feel embarrassed when God is not officially represented. With our souls in our own keeping, we could not be so cruelly surprised.

“As a matter of fact, priests and parsons know no more than we do about life and death. Truth lies deep within ourself, and the most that any ambassador of heaven can do is to direct our gaze inward. Although we know nothing, we have been born with an instinctive belief that the value of life cannot be measured merely in terms of the number of years one remains a living person. We can’t help feeling that every individual life contributes to an unknown total of Life. Our human misfortune is that we see individuals too big and Life itself too small. We forget we are like bees, whose glory is that each contributes, namelessly, a modicum to the hive and to the honey that gives point to their existence. We do wrong to attach tragic importance to the death of even our nearest friend, for their dying is a phase of their existence in the larger sense, just as sleeping is a phase of our twenty-four hour existence.

“The real tragedy is that we build up our lives upon something which is by its nature impermanent. The wisest of us are too prone to live for the sake of a person, and if that person suddenly ceases to exist the ground is swept from under us. To find a new footing is difficult, but possible, and it may even be good for us to be obliged to reach out in a new direction and live for something more permanent than ourselves.

“We are too easily discouraged by pain. We should learn from nature that pain is merely a symptom of growth. Trees could not be luxuriant in spring if in winter they hadn’t experienced privation. What we have derived from life has been at the expense of others’ privations and death; if we are unwilling to be deprived in our turn, we are stupidly selfish.

“Instinct tells us that, in a voice that can be heard above the voice of grief. It also tells us to be courageous and neighborly. In that spirit we can say that Katie’s loss is our opportunity. It affords us an occasion to prove our human solidarity by giving her a hand over the barren stretch and helping her to a new conception of life.

“In that spirit let us put a seal on the last reminder of the soul which has passed into the keeping of forces that direct us all, and let us do so with a profound reverence for all the elements in nature which are a mystery to us. Some of us have grown up without an orthodox faith. But we can all be humble enough to bow our heads in acknowledgement of the great wisdom which has created us mortal and immortal.”

Stepping back to make way for the men, Louise, on some incongruous urge, again made the sign of the cross with which she had superstitiously preluded her address. From the faces around her she knew she had spoken with an impersonal concentration as puzzling to them as it had been to herself.

One of the grave-diggers suddenly said “Amen,” and Mrs. Dixon, in tremulous tones, added, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”

The ceremony over, and Katie installed in the home of a neighbor until she should feel able to remove with her belongings to a cabin on the Eveley ranch, Louise rode away in the twilight towards the Valley, to spend a night with her father.

The air had a tang in it that suggested October rather than August, and the storm had deposited a sprinkling of white on the summits of the mountains. Not a sign remained of the landscape which only a few hours earlier had been drooping under a sultry heat. Her knuckles ached with cold as Sundown trotted on toward the town which was beginning to sparkle far away in the gloom.