The moment he was gone, fears began to fall upon Elizabeth: Maybe he would be killed. The most unreasonable things seemed to possess verity. He might meet another woman and run off with her. The wagon might overturn in the white pass and throw him into the river.
She had not got up to see him off, but when the sun was up she dressed and went to sit on the porch. Everything irritated her, the noise of grasshoppers ticking as they flew, the pieces of rusty baling wire lying on the ground. The smell of ammonia from the barns nearly nauseated her. When she had seen and hated all the things close to her, she raised her eyes to the hills for more prey, and the first thing she saw was the pine grove on the ridge. Immediately a sharp nostalgia for Monterey assailed her, a homesickness for the dark trees of the peninsula, and for the little sunny streets and for the white houses and for the blue bay with colored fishing boats; but more than anything for the pines. The resinous odor of the needles seemed the most delicious thing in the world. She longed to smell it until her body ached with desire. And all the time she looked at the black pine grove on the ridge.
Gradually the desire changed until she wanted only the trees. They called down to her from their ridge, called for her to come in among the trunks, out of the sun, and to know the peace that lay in a pine forest. She could see herself, and even feel herself lying on a pine needle bed, looking up at the sky between the boughs, and she could hear how the wind would swish softly in the tops of the trees, and go flying away, laden with the pine scent.
Elizabeth stood up from the steps and walked slowly toward the barn. Someone was in there, for she could see forkfuls of manure come bursting through the windows. She walked into the dark sweet barn and approached Thomas. "I want to go for a little ride," she said. "Would you mind hitching up a buggy for me?"
He leaned on the manure-fork. "Will you wait half an hour? When I finish this I will drive you."
She was angry at his interference. "I want to drive myself, I want to be alone," she said shortly.
He regarded her quietly. "I don't know whether Joseph would like you to go out alone."
"But Joseph isn't here. I want to go."
He leaned his fork against the wall then. "All right, I'll hitch up old Moonlight. She's gentle. Don't go off the road, though, you might get stuck in the mud. It's still pretty deep in some of the hollows."
He helped her into the buggy and stood apprehensively watching her as she drove away.
Instinctively Elizabeth knew he didn't want her to go to the pines. She drove a good distance from the house before she turned the old white mare's head up the hill and went bumping over the uneven ground. The sun was very hot and the valley windless. She had driven a long way up the hill before a deep water-cut stopped her progress. In both directions the crevass extended, too far to go around, and the pines were only a short distance away. Elizabeth climbed from the buggy, snapped the tie-strap around a root and unhooked the check rein. Then she clambered down into the cut and up the other side, and walked slowly toward the pine grove. In a moment she came upon a little twinkling stream that ran from the forest and flowed quietly because there were no stones to bar its way. She stooped and pulled a sprig of cress out of the water and nibbled it as she sauntered upward beside the stream.
All of her irritation was gone now; she went happily forward and entered the forest. The deep needle beds muffled her footsteps and the forest swallowed every other sound except the whispering of the needles in the treetops. For a few moments she walked on, unimpeded, and then the screen of vines and brambles barred her way. She turned her shoulder to them and forced a passage through, and sometimes she crawled through an opening on her hands and knees. There was a demand upon her that she penetrate deep into the forest.
Her hands were scratched and her hair pulled down when she came at last through the bramble wall and straightened up. Her eyes grew wide with wonder at the circle of trees and the clear flat place. And then her eyes swept to the huge, misshapen green rock.
She whispered to herself, "I think I knew it was here. Something in my breast told me it was here, this dear good thing." There was no sound at all in the place except the high whispering of the trees, and it was shut out, which only made the silence deeper, more impenetrable. The green moss covering of the rock was as thick as fur, and the long ferns hung down over the little cavern in its side like a green curtain. Elizabeth seated herself beside the tiny stream, slipping secretly away across the glade, and disappearing into the underbrush. Her eyes centered upon the rock and her mind wrestled with its suggestive shape. "Some place I've seen this thing," she thought. "I must have known it was here, else why did I come straight to it?" Her eyes widened as she watched the rock, and her mind lost all sharp thought and became thronged with slowly turning memories, untroubled, meaningless and vague. She saw herself starting out for Sunday School in Monterey, and then she saw a slow procession of white-dressed Portuguese children marching in honor of the Holy Ghost, with a crowned queen leading them. Vaguely she saw the waves driving in from seven different directions to meet and to convulse at Point Joe near Monterey. And then as she gazed at the rock she saw her own child curled head-downward in her womb, and she saw it stir slightly, and felt its movement at the same time.
Always the whispering went on over her head and she could see out of the corners of her eyes how the black trees crowded in and in on her. It came upon her as she sat there that she was alone in all the world; every other person had gone away and left her and she didn't care. And then it came upon her that she could have anything she wished, and in the train of this thought there came the fear that she most wished for death, and after that, for a knowledge of her husband.
Her hand moved slowly from her lap and fell into the cold water of the spring, and instantly the trees rushed back and the low sky flew upward. The sun had leaped forward as she sat there. There was a rustling in the forest now, not soft but sharp and malicious. She looked quickly at the rock and saw that its shape was as evil as a crouched animal and as gross as a shaggy goat. A stealthy cold had crept into the glade. Elizabeth sprang to her feet in panic, and her hands rose up and held her breasts. A vibration of horror was sweeping through the glade. The black trees cut off escape. There was the great rock crouching to spring. She backed away, fearing to take her eyes from it. When she had reached the entrance of the broad trail, she thought she saw a shaggy creature stir within the cave. The whole glade was alive with fear. She turned and ran down the trail, too frightened to scream, and she came, after a great time, to the open, where the warm sun shone.
The forest closed behind her and left her free.
She sat down, exhausted, by the little stream; her heart throbbed painfully and her breath came in gasps. She saw how the stream gently moved the cress that grew in its water, and she saw the mica specks glittering in the sand at the bottom. Then, turning for protection, she looked down on the clustered farm buildings where they were drenched with sun, and on the yellowing grass that bowed in long, flat silver waves before the afternoon wind. These were safe things; she was grateful for having seen them.
Before her fear was gone, she scrambled up to her knees to pray. She tried to think what had happened in the glade, but the memory of it was fading. "It was an old thing, so old that I have nearly forgotten it." She recollected her posture. "It was an unlawful thing." And she prayed, "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy name--" And she prayed, "Lord Jesus protect me from these forbidden things, and keep me in the way of light and tenderness. Do not let this thing pass through me into my child, Lord Jesus. Guard me against the ancient things in my blood." She remembered how her father said his ancestors a thousand years ago followed the Druidic way.
When the prayer was done, she felt better. A clear light entered her mind again and drove out the fear, and with it a memory of the fear. "It's my condition," she said. "I should have known. Nothing was in that place except my imagination. Rama has told me often enough what kind of things to expect."
18
THE summer heat was very great. Every day the sun beat down on the valley, sucking the moisture from the earth, drying the grass and causing every living thing to seek the deep shade of the sage thickets on the hills. All day the horses and cattle lay there, waiting for the night so they might come out for their feeding. The ranch dogs sprawled on the ground, with their quivering dripping tongues falling out of the sides of their mouths and their chests pumping like bellows. Even the noisy insects let the middle of the day be silent. At the meridian there was only a faint whine of rocks and earth, too fiercely scorched. The river receded until it was only a little stream, and when August came, even that disappeared.
Thomas was cutting the hay and shocking it to cure, while Joseph picked out the cattle for sale and drove them into the new corral. Burton prepared for his trip to Pacific Grove to attend the camp-meetings. He piled a tent, utensils, bedding and food in the buckboard, and one morning he and his wife set out behind two good horses to drive the ninety miles to the camp-ground. Rama had agreed to take care of his children for the three weeks of his absence. Elizabeth came out to wave him off, and she was glowing with health again. After her little spell of illness, she had grown beautiful and well. Her cheeks were red with coursing blood and her eyes shone with a mysterious happiness. Often Joseph, watching her, wondered what she knew or what she thought to make her seem always on the verge of laughter 'She knows something,' he said to himself "Women in this condition have a strong warmth of God in them. They must know things no one else knows. And they must feel a joy beyond any other joy. In some way they take up the nerve-ends of the earth in their hands." Joseph regarded her narrowly, and stroked his beard as slowly as an old man would.
With her coming time, Elizabeth grew increasingly possessive of her husband. She wanted him to sit with her all day and all evening, and she complained a little when he told her of the work to be done. "I'm idle here," she said. "Idleness loves company."
And he replied, "No, you're working." He could see in his mind how she was doing it. Her helpless hands lay crossed in her lap, but her bones were casting bones and her blood was distilling blood and her flesh was molding flesh. He laughed shortly at the thought that she was idle.
In the evenings when she demanded that he sit with her, she put out her arm to be stroked. "I'm afraid you'll go away," she said. "You might go out by that door and never come back, and then there'd be no father for the baby."
One day when they were sitting on the porch she asked abruptly, "Why do you love the tree so much, Joseph? Remember how you made me sit in it the first time I ever came out here?" She looked up to the high crotch where she had sat.
"Why, it's a fine big tree," he explained slowly. "I like it because it's a perfect tree, I guess."
She caught him up, then. "Joseph, there's more than that. One night I heard you speak to it as though it were a person. You called it 'sir,' I heard you."
He looked fixedly at the tree before he answered, and then after a while he told her how his father had died wanting to come West, and he told her about the morning when the letter came. "It's kind of a game, you see," he said. "It gives me a feeling that I have my father yet."
She turned her wide-set eyes on him, eyes full of the wisdom of child bearing. "It isn't a game, Joseph," she said silently. "You couldn't play a game if you wanted to. No, it isn't a game, but it's a good practice." And for the first time she saw into her husband's mind; all in a second she saw the shapes of his thoughts, and he knew that she saw them. The emotion rushed to his throat. He leaned to kiss her, but instead, his forehead fell upon her knees, and his chest filled to breaking.
She stroked his hair and smiled her wise smile. "You should have let me see before." And then she said, "But likely I hadn't proper eyes before."
When he lay with her at night and she rested her head on his arm for a little time before they went to sleep, she begged night after night to be reassured. "When my time comes, Joseph, you'll stay with me? I'm afraid I'll be afraid. I'm afraid I'll call and you won't be near. You won't be far way, will you? And if I call, you'll come?"
And he assured her, a little grimly, "I'll be with you, Elizabeth. Don't be worried about that."
"But not in the same room, Joseph. I wouldn't like you to see it. I don't know why. If you could be sitting in the other room and listening in case I should call, then I don't think I'd be afraid at all."
Sometimes in these nights in bed she told him of the things she knew, how the Persians invaded Greece and were beaten, and how Orestes came to the tripod for protection, and the Furies sat waiting for him to get hungry and let go his hold. She told them laughingly, all her little bits of knowledge that were designed to make her superior. All of her knowledge seemed very silly to her now.
She began to count the weeks until her time--three weeks from Thursday; and then two weeks and one day; and then, just ten days off. "This is Friday. Why, Joseph, it will be on a Sunday. I hope it will. Rama has listened. She says she can even hear the heartbeats. Would you believe that?"
One night she said, "It'll be just about a week now. I get little shivers when I think about it."
Joseph slept very lightly. When Elizabeth sighed in her sleep, his eyes opened and he listened uneasily.
One morning he awakened when the chorus of young roosters crowed on their perches. It was still dark, but the air was alive with the coming dawn and with the freshness of the morning. He heard the older cocks crowing with full rounded notes as though reproving the younger ones for their cracked thin voices. Joseph lay with his eyes open and saw the myriad points of light come in and make the air dark grey. Gradually the furniture began to appear. Elizabeth was breathing shortly in her sleep. A slight catch was in her breath. Joseph prepared to slip out of the bed, to dress and to go out to the horses, when suddenly Elizabeth sprang upright beside him. Her breath stopped and then her legs stiffened and she screamed with pain.
"What is it?" he cried. "What's the matter, dear?"
When she didn't answer he jumped up and lighted the lamp and bent over her. Her eyes were bulging and her mouth had dropped open and her whole body quivered tensely. Then she screamed hoarsely again. He fell to rubbing her hands, until, after a moment, she chopped back on the pillow.
"There's a pain in my back, Joseph," she moaned. "Something's wrong. I'm going to die."
He said, "Just a moment, dear. I'm going for Rama," and he ran out of the room.
Rama, aroused from sleep, smiled gravely. "Go back to her," she commanded. "I'll be right over. It's a little sooner than I thought. She'll be all right for a while now."
"But hurry," he demanded.
"There's no hurry. You'll start walking her right away. I'll get Alice to help now."
The dawn was flushing when the two women came across the yard, their arms full of clean rags. Rama took charge immediately. Elizabeth, still shocked by the sharpness of the pain, looked helplessly at her.
"It's all right," Rama reassured her. "It's just as it should be." She sent Alice to the kitchen to build a fire and to heat a wash-boiler of water. "Now Joseph, help her to her feet, help her to walk." And while he walked her back and forth across the room, Rama slipped the covers from the bed and put the quilted birth pad down and hooked the loops of the velvet rope over the foot posts. When the blighting pain struck again, they let her sit in a straight chair until it was over. Elizabeth tried not to scream, until Rama leaned over her and said, "Don't hold it in. There's no need. Everything you feel like doing is needful now."
Joseph, with his arm around her waist, walked her back and forth across the room, supporting her when she stumbled. He had lost his fear. There was a fierce glad light in his eyes. The pains came closer and closer together. Rama brought the big Seth Thomas clock in from the sitting-room and hung it on the wa
ll, and she looked at it every time the pains came. And the pains grew closer and closer together. The hours passed.
It was nearly noon when Rama nodded her head sharply. "Now let her lie down. You can go out now, Joseph. I'll be getting my hands ready."
He looked at her with half-closed eyes. He seemed entranced. "What do you mean, 'getting your hands ready'?" he demanded.
"Why washing and washing in hot water and soap, and cutting the nails close."
"I'll do it," he said.
"It's time for you to go, Joseph. The time is short."
"No," he said sullenly. "I'll take my own child. You tell me what to do."
"You can't, Joseph. It's not a thing for a man to do."
He looked gravely at her, and her will gave away before his calm. "It's a thing for me to do," he said.
As soon as the sun had risen the children congregated outside the bedroom window, where they stood listening to Elizabeth's weak screaming, and shivering with interest. Martha took charge from the first. "Sometimes they die," she said.
Although the morning sun beat fiercely upon them, they did not leave their post. Martha laid down the rules. "First one that hears the baby cry says, 'I hear it!' and that one gets a present, and that one gets the first baby. Mother told me." The others were very much excited. They cried in unison, "I hear it," every time a new series of screams began. Martha made them help her to climb up where she could peek quickly into the window. "Uncle Joseph is walking with her," she reported. And later, "Now she's lying on the bed and she's holding the red rope that mother made."
The screams grew ever closer together. The other children helped Martha to look again, and she came down a little pale and choking at what she had seen. They gathered close about her for the report "I saw--Uncle Joseph--and he was leaning over--" She paused to get her breath. "And--and his hands were red." She fell silent and all the children stared at her in amazement. There wasn't any more talking or whispering. They simply stood and listened. The screams were so weak by now that they could barely hear them.
To a God Unknown Page 12
