Between the Flowers: A Novel

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  He saw her then, the heavy snowy twilight not deep enough to hide the eagerness in her eyes. "Why, I thought you'd be in th' kitchen with th' others," he apologized, and added as he kissed her, "You oughtn't to be out here, bare-headed and without a coat."

  "Inever thought," she answered, and stood crimping her apron. She wished he hadn't noticed that she wore no coat, and that he had come dashing to the house like Poke Easy.

  She felt better when he gently flicked snow from her hair and smiled and said, "Delph, you ought to ha been in Lexington."

  She flipped her apron excitedly. "I guess you learned from that man all about how we're goin'. I just can't wait to hear it all. I wish I had a map right now. Will we start from New Orleans?"

  "Delph?" he began, not looking at her face, but down at the snow on her shoes, "Ilet's wait 'til after supper to talk a goin' away. Mostly, I stayed in th' tobacco warehouse, anyhow."

  "Not three whole days."

  He nodded. "I listened to th' farmers talk.There was an, an old hill man from th' Rockcastle Country close to where Roan has his landyou know Roan's buyin' up land. He smoked a corn cob pipe an' didn't look to have a dime. He'd brought just a little crop a tobacco, maybe six hundred pounds, but on his bottom lands by th' river he'd raised he said better'n two thousand bushels a corn.But there wasn't any way to haul out his corn, so he bought hogs"

  Delph pulled his sleeve. "I just recollected, I left Dorie's pie crust half rolled, an' I'm gettin' my feet wet out in this snow."

  Page 129

  "I'll have to buy you boots like Katy's," he said, and with a, "We'll keep your feet dry now," he caught her up and ran to the back porch steps. She laughed and protested and tried to squirm free, and reminded him just as they reached the porch, "Marsh, recollect I can't wait much longer to hear about our plans.''

  They entered the kitchen, damp with snow, red lipped, warm eyed, and Dorie, finishing the pie crust that Delph had started, beamed on them and said, "Lord, such a pair of lovers."

  What with the success of the tobacco crop and everybody's attempt to take Dorie's mind from Prissy, Fairchild Place was gay that night, warm and bright with lights from its windows brightening long reaches of the falling snow. Supper was a lengthy meal; the first part given mostly to food and drink, the last and longest to talk, talk that sometimes rose into heated discussions, or quieted again into brotherly agreement; solid talk of land and crops and cattle, the neighbors, the roads, markets, schools, Roan's troubles in trying to get a county stock law and a law making tuberculin tests of cows compulsory.

  Delph listened for a time, hoping always that this conversation would take a different turn; that Poke Easy would talk a bit of his life at the university, Brother Eli tell of his experiences in China as a missionary, Dorie speak of Sam, but most of all she wished they would talk of Marsh's work and plans. Yet, no mention was made of his going away.

  All through the dinner Marsh's eyes were continually straying into hers, gentle they were and kind, saying many things, but never of what she wanted to hear. He looked tired, she thought, and troubled, not gay and eager for their life away together as she had always hoped he would be; but worried as he had looked that day in the Little South Fork Country when he had asked her to marry him. But gradually when the business of eating was finished and the talk flew faster, he listened to the others and the troubled look left his face. Brother Eli was telling how his vineyard throve in the rocky limestone soil he had; Delph watched Marsh as he leaned across the table and looked at the old man with his eyes eager like a child's eyes, and seeing more than an old man's beard. She was suddenly lonesome, and wishing very much that she and Marsh could be alone together.

  No one except Katy noticed when she slipped from the table and went to the kitchen; and Katy, tired from setting still so long,

  Page 130

  followed her, and marveled at her industrious ways when Delph said, "I thought I'd start washin' th' dishes."

  The fire was out and the stove cold, but they threw in good dry sugar tree branches and sat on the wood box and waited for the dish water to warm. Delph hugged her knees and watched the maple flames flicker and snap with their yellow tongues at the stove grate bars. "Let's sit in th' dark an' see things in th' grate," Katy whispered and turned out the light.

  Delph smiled and felt less lonesome. "I'm tryin' to imagine how it will be. I can't even think what I'd like to see first, so many things."

  "I think I'd take th' sea for mine, Katy said. "It must be fine to see it in a storm."

  "Oh, but th' hearin' of it," Delph whispered. "You know, I've wondered lots of times. I know it can't be peaceful like an' sleepy soundin' as th' singin' shells in th' parlor at home. More like th' wind in th' high back hills in winter or like th' wind in th' beech trees in th' spring." She felt free with the child Katy, more so even than with Marsh; and under cover of the darkness and the loud conversation in the dining room, talked on in soft hesitant whispers. ''I'd like to see an island in th' sea, an' a mountain all white with snow, but more than that I thinkI think I'd like to beat least for a little whilewith people different from me. Some that wouldn't look at me an' knowwell ever'thing. Some that couldn't say, "There goes Delph. She must be pretty bad else she would ha joined th' church. She's one a th' Little South Fork Costellos, kin ofan' on an' on th' way they know. Oh, just once I'd like to be a stranger in a strange place."

  Katy nodded, then glanced in a troubled way at Delph's eyes shining in the firelight. "It would be nice," she said. "I hope to do it some day, but stillit's like Mama always says, 'Never give all your heart to any one thing. Divide it out in pieces, an' then have back a piece in case.'"

  "In case of what?"

  "I don't remember th' rest of it.Lord we've set here talkin' away till th' dish water's hot enough to boil." And Katy sprang up, turned on the lights and began washing the dishes.

  Laughter and talk continued in the dining room; Katy had almost finished the dishes brought to the kitchen, and was threatening to go

  Page 131

  clear the table, when Brother Eli was heard to suggest that they all go down and have another look at the new calf. They came trooping through the kitchen not long after, Dorie high-spirited now as she had been low not long before. "Maybe it is a nice calf, but all th' same I'll never keep it, or that Prissy either," she explained to the company, but with no touch of sorrow.

  Delph watched Marsh, hoping he would not go with the others but stay behind with her. But he never saw her, and smiled with the others when Brother Eli paused to stroke his beard and study the ceiling as he did in his sermons, then suggest to Dorie with a crafty glint in his eye, "Tell you what, Dorie. I'll be glad to take her off your hands. I could maybe make you a better price than she'd bring on th' market."

  "Now, Brother Eli, I appreciate your kindness," Dorie answered as if she meant it, "but I'll never sell Prissy like a common cow, no better'n so many pounds a beef. I mean to give her to Marsh."

  Marsh looked more startled and incredulous than pleased. "But Dorie, I couldn't take a present like that. You've done."

  "None a that now. You've helped in th' tobacco all fall. Pshaw if I'd a paid you a grader's wages they a been more'n th' price a Prissy."

  "But you'll have th' feedin' an' tendin' a her all th' while I'm gone."

  "Law, Delph can do that. A pretty little thing like Prissy would be good company for her when you're gone."

  "It would maybe help," Marsh said. He stopped abruptly, and stood hunting Delph with his eyes, hoping against a kind of certainty that she had not heard. He would tell her tonight when they were alone.

  Something dropped to the floor with the splintering tinkle of breaking glass, and the room was still with everyone looking at Delph in the corner by the cupboard. She stood with a blue striped dish cloth in her hands, and looked, not at the broken glass by her feet, but at Marsh. He saw her eyes and looked away. They were wide with wonder and fright and disbelieving, unwilling to believe what she had hear
d. Young Caesar came nosing at the broken glass, and looked up at her and thumped his tail, while Dorie said in a strained embarrassed voice, not like Dorie's, "Pshaw, Delph, don't mind breakin' a little thing like a glass," and Katy ran for a broom and dust pan.

  Page 132

  But Delph was still, like Lot's wife turned to salt, looking at Marsh with her great disbelieving eyes. Marsh glanced at her again, and it was easier to turn and follow Poke Easy through the door. He walked slowly with the damp snow slithering under his feet, but he had the sensation of running, of covering great reaches of space and of time, running away from Delph, putting an endless distance between them.

  He walked with the others through the barn and listened to their talk, heard all the sounds he loved; horses breathing in contented regularity, hens craaking in the dark, and the rustle of fodder blades as some cow drowsily helped herself to a late snack.

  He saw the mild eyed Prissy as she lay and chewed her cud, glancing now and then at her wobbly legged calf with as much love in her eyes as if it had been the expected blueblood, subject to register. He only nodded when Brother Eli said, "When you come back in a year an' a half or so you'll have a fine young heifer as well as a cow."

  He slipped from the others and went outside and walked about in the snowy barnyard. It was too dark to see the snow, but he could feel the flakes cool on his face and his hands. He wished it were day and he could see over the Cumberland. Maybe when he came back he could look over there or at some piece of land, and plan, and know that he could meet his plan with no danger that he would lose his reason and go against his head for land as he had gone for Delph.

  He heard the others leave the barn, the good-byes of Dr. Andy and Brother Eli on the front porch, then the sound of Dr. Andy's car chugging away toward Burdine. He waited, and saw lights leap out from the bedroom windows, Delph's window brightening with the others. He tried to shape sentences in his mind, have all the hard words of explanation ready patterned on his tongue, but Delph's hurt eyes kept scattering the words. Black Peter and Brown Bertha came from their quarters in the tool house and nosed his feet and smelled his hands as if to question his business there.

  He went to the back porch then, and was careful and slow about cleaning the mud from his shoes. He opened the back door softly, tip-toed up the back stairs and down the dimly lighted hall. Dorie most likely thought he was with Delph, not hiding out in the barnyard like a coward ashamed of his plans. He listened a time by

  Page 133

  Delph's closed door. She would be crying most likely, crying because he was going away; but he would comfort her, make her understandmaybe not nowbut soon, some day she would see.

  He opened the door, glanced first toward the bed, but it stood untouched and smooth. He saw her then, standing stiff and straight with her back to the fire. She was smiling a fixed hard smile that made her face a mask with two holes for eyes; the stricken eyes of some wounded animal, strange above the woman's smile. He wished he had found her crying. Her tears would hurt but not like this; cry with her eyes and lie with her mouth as if he were a stranger permitted to see the parts of her she would have him see.

  She watched in silence as he closed the door and waited while he walked up to the hearth. She glanced at his feet, and he thought guiltily of his cowardly vigil in the snow. "Iwent with th' others to see Prissy."

  "Yes, I saw you go," she said in a quiet voice unlike her own.

  He put his arm around her shoulder, but she took no notice of the gesture, and in a moment stepped away. He looked into the fire while words rolled clumsily through his brain, but shape themselves on his tongue they would not. He fingered a china hen on the mantle while he said, "Delph, I meant to tell you tonight. II'm sorry it came so sudden like before th' others. But you'll see it's th' best way, th' only sensible thing."

  "For you to go awayan' me stay here?"

  He nodded and set the china hen back on her nest. "I can't risk it, Delph."

  She turned to him, Delph again, alive and eager, warm blood laying a stain on her checks and her eyes bright hot blue. "I'm not afraid, Marsh. I wouldn't mind anything. Dorie she's talked to you. Made you think I'd be no good for goin' with you to th' oil fields.Marsh, I married you. I'm your wife. Please, can't you see?"

  He looked at her, and then into the fire. He somehow couldn't tell her tonight, that it wasn't only a question of her safety, but money, something that could ensure their being together always.

  Page 134

  10

  Marsh did not cry as Katy cried, or turn to stone like Delph; he cursed sometimes; cursed Dorie's mules with clenched teeth in low toned oil man's curses. The mules flipped their ears and rolled their eyes, but never tried to run away from him as they sometimes did with Angus. One day not long after Poke Easy's return to the university, Angus watched Marsh as he brought the mules in from watering and said, half enviously, ''You're a natural born hand with stock."

  Marsh pushed his hat back and stared hard at nothing. "Looks like stock's about all I know how to handle, though."

  Angus shifted his tobacco to the other cheek and observed, careful to keep his eyes on the ground, "Lucky with horses, unlucky with womenthat's a old sayin'."

  Marsh's eyes snapped. "Who in th' Hell says I'm unlucky with women. I've got th' best wife in th' world."

  Angus smiled down at him. "But you're leavin' her," he said, and strode away whistling "Shady Grove."

  Marsh stood still and looked after him until he had walked down the barn hall and disappeared behind a stable door. He started after him, remembering he had offered to help in the messy work of cleaning cow stalls; then wheeled abruptly about and hurried toward the house. He wanted to see Delph. There was always the hope that he would find her as he had expected she would be. Sad, or crying even, but reasonable, agreeing that his plan was a wise plan, the only sensible one. He couldn't leave her as she was; stony calm in speech and action, but under that calmness, fighting eternally, continually alert

  Page 135

  for signs of his weakening. She was the one to weaken. Some day she would realize that her notions were those of a child.

  The kitchen was empty, and he ran up the stairs and into her room. She sat in a low rocker by the fire and mended a pair of his oil man's corduroys. He hated the sight of the trousers, discolored by oil and salt water, frayed at the cuffs and pale at the knees. He must have mixed and shot and hauled a million gallons of nitroglycerin while he wore trousers like thoseor at least it seemed that many. "I wouldn't mess with that junk, Delph," he said, and came and squatted on his heels by the hearth.

  She smiled, the forced unnatural smile that touched her face so often now, then bit a thread and said, "It's only six more days. I want to do ever'thing I can."

  "That's right. It's not long." He looked up into her sad rebellious eyes, and wondered wearily why it was that when he was most certain of her love, he was least certain of her mind. "Delph?"

  "Yes."

  "I wish you wouldn't take it so. A year an' a half or even two's not a life time."

  "It'll seem like it."

  He waited a time with the room so still he could hear his own breathing, then tried again, "Delph?"

  "Yes."

  "I wishI mean it's hard to go away an' have youwellnot wantin' to do what we are doin'. Can't youwellthink it over an' see it's th' best thing.You'll maybe see a lot of th' worldsomeday. An' if you don't you've not missed much."

  She ran the needle through the cloth in careful even stitches, and looked at it with flushed face while she said, "It's not thatnow. You know it's not. Marsh, I didn't marry you just becausewell because you would go away. If seein' th' world was all I wanted I'd a run away or waited there 'til I was twenty-one. Afterafter I started goin' with you th' other things I wanted didn't come first anymore. I'd go any place," she went on slowly, her voice like the taut beating of a too-tight fiddle string, "I'd take anythingthat oil shanty you batched in back at homethat is if you'd be there. Marsh, couldn't
you get a job closer homeTexas or Oklahoma or Kansassomeplace where there's oil?"