The Time of Man

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

  ‘Miss Cassie didn’t say e’er word to me about her trouble,’ she answered. ‘I knowed Miss Cassie only when I see her go by on the pike or see her off on her land. I couldn’t say e’er word for sure about Miss Cassie.’

  The morning too was strange and long, for Ellen waked several times to see the sun dimly shining at her window. The pictures of the night stood back and far away, hardly troubling her sleep. Her body was tired and heavy and dull, for a night of watching was strange to her experience. She slept heavily from hour to hour and awakened in the afternoon to sit by the fire in a dazed silence. Henry had told Nellie of the night and now he slept on the bed. After she had milked the cows Ellen looked for her own heifer in the great pasture, for she had not seen the yearling for many days, and now she wanted to see the beast, to rub her neck and claim her again as her own, to enjoy the simple sheen of her rich fur and the pleasure of possession, to touch her warm impersonal being. She thought that there would be rain and her mind clung about the fact of the rain. It would settle down by nightfall and all the frost would go out of the ground. She looked away toward the north country, ignoring the south, wilfully forgetting the cedar trees and the doves and the marsh. The clouds shut out the far hills and many white vapours hung near the earth, dull over the pasture. It was spring.

  Overhead the clouds ran near the earth, shutting together with deeper seams of leaden silver. A great change had come in a day for it was spring. On the pasture’s brow, just where the hill rolled up to a smooth faint crest, Jonas came, leading his horse. She let her little cow drift away down toward the feeding ricks and met Jonas as he walked on the slope. He had come to tell her that he was going away.

  ‘A man named Cornish wants me to put in his crops. It’s away over toward Cornishville, near twenty mile or more maybe. A man came up to me on the street in town today and he says, “Want a good job?”’

  Jonas was full of the new enterprise, eager to tell of it, proud of it. ‘It’ll be a job now, to look after everything on big place. A small parcel of cows and a few sheep. All the crops.’

  His going, elevated to managing an entire farm, filled her with a rich pride. He would make a journey to a new country, she thought with fervour, and she herself expanded to take in the adventure and the new world and the new way between them.

  ‘I aim to leave right now,’ he said. ‘I promised to be there afore sunup.’

  She hardly realised that she was not going herself. They stood together under the leaden twilight on the brow of the low bare pasture with the land reaching far about them, the cows gliding slowly before the feeding ricks and Ben going from barn to barn. Some crows were flocking over Gowan’s field, stretching in a long mass across the sky’s edge, and now and again came their slow deliberate laughter, ha… ha… ha…, hollow and high-pitched; ha… ha… ha…

  ‘I was a-standen on the street corner when a man says, “Want a good job? Out past Cornishville. Good pay. Man crippled a Saturday that owns the land. Good clever man. Treat you fair and pay all that’s right.” Thinks I, I can do it if any man can. Just you watch Jonas.’ His head was high in his pleasure and pride.

  It would rain all night, a slow dripping wet, and in the morning the road would be spotted with standing puddles Jonas would be riding far into the night, wet with the rain, leaping ahead on the little horse. ‘Which way is Cornishville now?’ she asked.

  ‘You couldn’t see. It’s a far piece off.’

  The ground was dull and colourless, and there was no green anywhere but in the few low cedar bushes off at the pasture’s edge. The lead of the sky settled down over the earth and another leadenness arose out of the earth seams and hollows.

  ‘Is it that country I can see in a fair time from the hill maybe?’ she asked.

  ‘You couldn’t see. It’s a long piece that way,’ he pointed.

  ‘I’ll come back,’ Jonas said, looking at her for parting. She felt his look penetrate her face and reach her need of him just as a few drops of rain began to fall. ‘I aim to be off now. I’ll ride Jake here.’ They were two leaden figures rising out of the earth, walking down the brow of the gentle crest. Ellen saw their feet rising and falling darkly into the dark of the ground, themselves the living part of all the dull spring. Their figures were mingled with the darkness of the horse that came down, head bowed, close behind them. Then Jonas took her into his arms and kissed her for leaving, pressing her against the shoulder of the horse and gathering her to himself.

  ‘God blast me to perdition if ever I forget you, Elleen. When I come back we’ll get married,’ he said.

  ‘Elmer and Dorine… Do you know it?’ he said again.

  ‘I knowed a right smart while.’

  ‘I’ll come back afore long. Then me and you.’

  She separated them in her mind while she clung to him, knowing for the first time that she was not going, realizing that when he went she would be there, herself, Jonas gone, the two divided. Then she flung back the shawl from her head and buried her face against his face, pressing her bosom into his bosom, crying, ‘Jonas, don’t go, Jonas, Jonas, take me,’ until he trembled under the impact of her pleading, and they stood together weeping, she with tears and he with wrenching sobs.

  ‘God Almighty blast me to perdition, I’d as soon give up life itself as you, Elleen,’ he said. His words mingled with their weeping, falling between their cries and their caresses. ‘God Almighty damn me for a fool if ever I forget. If ever I forget e’er look of your face or the feel of you. God blast me…’ The crows had cried their last laughter and went away into the dark, and Ben’s voice came over the pasture calling some straying hog, ‘Ho-eee, peeg, peeg, peeg, peeg,’ over and over. ‘Blast me if ever I forget or don’t come back like I say,’ Jonas bound tight his oath. He put her shawl over her head and folded it about her breast. ‘I got to go tonight. It’s a fine job, the best I could get anywheres, and I already given my word I’d be there by sunup. I’ll come back afore long. And I’ll write you a letter.’ Then he climbed on the horse and rode away in the falling rain.

  The house among the cedar trees stood empty and presently the shutters were falling, making of it a fearful place to see, the great blank windows staring. Someone took MacMurtrie’s hounds away and the cows went somehow from the pasture. Ellen never heard again the high eerie cry, pee-o-wee-wee, going out over the marsh or over the sheep pasture. The absence of the cry came over her mind as a power holding the land and touching herself, and when she climbed Wakefield’s wooded hill or stole a little way into the thicket lying around the marsh her ears were half-alert for it although she had a deep knowledge that it would never come. With the thought of the cry or of the stilled cry there would be the thought of Jonas, or if she stooped over a bank his hand reached with her hand to gather violets. His hand reached with her hand when she dropped the beans in their rows or when she placed chosen eggs under a brooding hen. His fingers curved with her fingers and his foot set itself in the path with her foot. In the early morning, going up to the tobacco field, looking up into the blue of the sky that was finely granulated and delicately moted with dissolving cycles flowing outward and forming forever under her gaze, something to breathe and to have, plovers in it, his gaze went up with her gaze and his happiness parted her lips while his hand on her back steadied her shoulders.

  Eli and Rosie were married and went away to another country to live, and Ellen saw no more of Rosie, for the way was long and hard to go and Eli could spare no time for journeys. When Jonas had been gone two weeks or more he wrote Ellen a letter which she read many times, following each phrase to its last degree of meaning and searching out each connoted thought. The letter: ‘Friend Ellen, I came up here and I am working for old Mr Bee Cornish. He got his arm ripped wide open in a sawmill. Last week I ploughed for corn and this I am planting. I hope it holds off raining until I get done. Then the patch is to set out, about three acres in all, not much tobacco. Dear, dear Elleen. I think of you every day. I will kiss the letters of your nam
e. Mr Cornish is a fine man and the pay is good. I hope the weather stays pretty until after next week. Then let it rain. I will be back sometime. Goodbye dear Elleen.’ It was signed ‘Jonas W. Prather’.

  Ellen wrote a reply in which she told of the newly worked highway and of the opened road through MacMurtrie’s land, of the geese Miss Tod was growing, silly things always thinking someone was about to pester them. The dogwood tree was a fair sight to see this time, she said, and she told of Rosie’s wedding. When he came back the cherries would be ripe and she would bake him a pie. She wanted to tell him something more, but pore over the words as she would and empty her mind of its phrases, she could not find the adequate sayings. On the paper words seemed hard and dumb, or given freedom they were sugared and easy and light. She tore these away and began anew, leaving in the news of the farm and of the dogwood, of Rosie, and the promise of the cherries. In the end she wrote that when he came she would have much to tell, trusting that she would then find a way.

  Elmer and Dorine went to town one day and returned married. The Wheatleys moved away from MacMurtrie’s tenant house and in a little while the dock and the fennel overgrew the yard and tall sprouts obliterated the windows. Ellen never knew whether Jonas had her letter or not, and when no reply came with the passing days she felt sure that it had gone astray. The cherries ripened and went, but then they were earlier than usual that year, and there would be the blackberries coming and these were in plenty.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dorine and Elmer lived on Gowan land, back in the farm, far from the large house, their place approached by a different pike. The cabin stood under a great poplar tree, strange and distantly removed as Ellen came toward it along its fenceline, as if it held its occupants but temporarily, and she always felt that presently she should go there no more. She went to see Dorine several times in June, whenever she could get away from the tobacco and when she could find a work horse idle in the pasture. Dorine would be glad to see her and eager to display herself as mistress of a house, but she was changed, and Elmer was changed. If Ellen went on Sunday she would find Elmer sitting around the house door, and he would talk a little. He seemed secure and satisfied, even drowsy and unalert. If a man he knew came along the road, stopping to talk, they would spend the hour droning. One day Dorine talked much of Sallie Lou Brown and her pretty dress, her new stitches, her pink petticoat and her bracelet. Sallie Lou had no home; she lived about among relatives, and now she had come to stay a while with the Seays, three miles away. She had been to see Dorine the week before and she was coming again soon. When Ellen went again Dorine said:

  ‘Sallie Lou was here Sunday with Jonas. I reckon you know he’s back and a-worken for Barnet down the river a long piece.’

  Ellen felt with her hand for Jonas’s letter where it lay pinned to an inner garment and crushed warm against her breast. She had not known that he had come back.

  ‘They drove up in Barnet’s buggy hitched to Jonas’s horse and they looked all spruced up fitten to kill.’

  ‘I reckon Sallie Lou is a right pretty girl by now,’ Ellen hardly knew what her mouth was saying. She had not known he had come.

  ‘You know Jonas was a-worken, while he was gone, right in the Brown neighbourhood, amongst Sallie Lou’s kin.’

  ‘I reckon Sallie Lou is right pretty.’

  ‘Sallie Lou is pretty enough. She and Jonas went together a right smart while he was over there, from all they have to talk about.’

  Ellen went home long before sundown to be ready for the turkeys and the milking hour. She was penetrating deeply into her memory to try to reconstruct Sallie Lou, whom she had seen but once, on the night of Dorine’s first party. She saw again through it. Voices were singing together and feet were tramping to measures. A girl was stepping about in the dance, a girl with white stockings on her slim ankles. She had on a green flowered dress that made her look very slender up and down. Her hand was lifted to catch the hand of her partner and she had a gold ring on her finger, a slim gold ring. Ellen saw her again, this time in the kitchen by the little mirror. Her hair this time was yellow and brown; it had fallen down and she was pinning it up before the glass. A boy – his name was Tim – was beside her, handing her the hairpins and teasing. He dropped a hairpin down her back. When she laughed her mouth became square at the corners and a little mark came under one eye. She was nearly always in the dance with Tim. Her dress had small sewing-machine stitches going in rows up the front and over the shoulder.

  ‘Tim talks to Sallie Lou. That’s a case for sure.’ Jonas’s voice.

  ‘She’s a pretty girl.’ Ellen heard her own words again.

  ‘Who? That! Naw, not much! I know one that’s prettier.’

  They were sitting on the floor eating the custard and cake. ‘Saw old Sallie Lou a-cryen the night she joined,’ one said.

  Ellen still kept the note against her body. It was folded into a little square of clean white cloth. While she walked slowly up and down the tobacco rows she could feel it push against her flesh, could feel it anew each time she bent over the hoe. One afternoon Dorine came; they sat on the porch just outside the kitchen, Nellie, Dorine and Ellen. Ellen had put on a colourless dress, the dress of the summer before washed clean and sweet, crisply ironed, and she had tied a small blue ribbon about her throat as the other girls were using. Dorine talked about her turkeys which she was raising with a chicken hen. She was afraid to stay alone in the house and sometimes she went to the field where Elmer was at work and sat in a fence corner or under a tree, but she became lonesome doing that. She had canned some cherries. She came back again and again to the turkeys and their hen mother, to the cherries, to what Elmer liked to eat. She seemed very well contented although her hair was not so glossy as it had formerly been, as if it were untended. Ellen went away to get some corn to shell for the hens and while she was gone Dorine and Nellie talked, their voices running into low confidences and they seemed both to be talking at once, but when she came back they were still until Dorine asked some idle question about the corn. She had some bit of news of Rosie, and then came back to the cherries again. Ellen shelled the corn and went away to feed the hens, and while she was gone she heard the low eager purring of voices. ‘Ellen don’t know,’ she heard Dorine say when she came near the porch again.

  She sat in her chair, her pale dress crumpled about her body, her back straight and strong, her shoulders high and easily moving. The blue ribbon under her chin adorned her, even her mind, and she felt it upon her as a mark of daintiness, and she drew herself together, feeling the lightness of her body while the gossip flowed uneagerly about this thing and that. Dorine liked to talk with Nellie better than with herself, her friend, Dorine. She went indoors and began to rearrange her hair, going above to her room and letting the confidences flow unhindered. She had learned to pile her hair on her head in low even rolls and she had learned to brush a sheen into the brown strands. Dorine liked to talk with Nellie better than with herself. They had more things to talk of together than they had with her. Her hair rolled into soft pliant coils that lay one beside another and there was the blue line at her throat. She lingered over the hair, preparing it lovingly, thinking of Jonas as she rolled the loops and settled the mass. Jonas had wandered away a little, but when he came back he would weep again at her breast, for he would come, any other way being impossible to think, and when he came he would like this new wave of her hair. She went back to sit again on the chair with her pale dress crumpled over her knees, her body straight and light, and she could feel the hair, like a crest on her head, and feel herself apart from the other two. Presently Dorine went and Ellen went to her evening tasks, milking the cow by the yard gate and gathering home the turkeys. Her hair still kept its graceful poise and the ribbon at her throat set a beauty upon her thinking and upon herself. Dorine was gone. It was not the same between them. Rosie was gone. Elmer was gone; he would never come back. They had all been around her, but now they were gone. She had bound a blue ribbon about her throat
, about herself. She had thought it would last forever but it was gone from them, whatever it was, but not from her.

  All the outer part of her made itself more beautiful, her hair, her dress, her light body. She walked among the cows with a still grace, light and high and free, standing above the cows. John Bradshaw looked at her, and Mr Al looked, even Ben, but no one spoke except on the business of getting the milk. She turned away the cows, one by one, as she milked them, opening the gate, holding herself aside, milking another, moving slowly but lightly, never hurrying, never changing, every beautiful part functioning. The old way was gone. They had been around her, friends, and she had thought that it would be forever, but they were changed and gone. Perhaps Jonas, even Jonas was gone.

  She came down from the pens knowing that all her beauties, assembled, standing around her, serene and proud, were standing about a great hollow inner space. In her body, in her breast, there was gathering a void, and it was spreading past her power to hold it. She knew this while she walked along the summer path beside the stepping stones, and she knew it again and more completely as she moved up the gentle slope from the pond.

  Dorine held her in slight contempt because she had not been able to keep Jonas, or so it seemed to her, and she strove to hide her disgrace from Maggie and the others. She thought that she would go to see Sallie Lou. There were eggs to take to the store and she would come back through Robinson’s place and stop at Seay’s house. For a day or two she thought of this plan, and then one afternoon she put on her new dark cotton dress, her newest garment, planning the journey. She argued between the blue sunbonnet and the hat, for if she wore the hat the call would seem formal, almost as if she had come on purpose, dressed up. If she wore the bonnet it would seem more as if she had been somewhere else and had merely dropped in on the way. The bonnet would be best, she thought.