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He shook his head. "They'd never pay as well. An' this is only a year an' a half, Delph, an then we'll have money, enough to."
"Money," she flared, then sorrow overcame her anger, and she bent meekly to her sewing. "All that time in this sad old house, Marsh, with its attic full of books an' such, all tellin' of Dorie's children that are gone. An' Dorie, she's old. I can't just stay here like a knot on a logI can'tnot without youan' hear th' trains blow an' th' cars pass, an' wait an' wonder if you're all right." She was crying now, hard unwilling sobs.
He put his arm around her and struggled for comforting words, and felt the hopelessness of trying to give her what he needed most. After a time she wiped her eyes and sewed again, and smiled her stiff unnatural smile. "I'm sorry. I hate women that cry an' beg an' carry on.I've been thinkin', Marsh." She hesitated and looked at him, then continued, "You know I've more than a hundred dollars of my ownUncle John gave me money to save now an' then. Katy's told me that some business schools in Louisville or Cincinnati might take meeven if I've not finished high school."
"But Delph."
"Now wait. I've planned it all. I had to think a somethin'to, well, kind of take th' place of you. Katy knows a girl who graduated from Burdine High School an' went to Louisville an' worked for her board an' took a business course on hardly nothin' at all an' now she has a job. If she could do it I don't see why I couldn't. My teachers, of course they didn't know so much themselves, always said I could learn anything I wanted to learn."
Marsh was on his feet now. "Delph, you're married. You can't do that."
She smiled into the fire, and never noticed his face. "I know it would seem strange to live in a town, a real town, but other girls from th' sticks they go an' work an' live. I could, while you're gone."
"Delph, you can't go off an' hunt a job likelike you didn't have a man to look out for you."
She saw his startled angry eyes, and threw out her hands in a helpless, bewildered way. "But, Marsh, I've got to do somethin' I can't just wait an' wait. An' pretty soon I'd be makin' money. That's sensible."
"I'll make th' money. Your uncle would say things had come to a pretty pass when."
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"What do you care what he says?"
"Youyou workin' like a hired girl to get through a business course you'd use just a little while, when you could be here safe with Dorie. Of all th' damn foolishness." Delph was crying again, and his voice echoed in his cars like a great thundering, gruff and loud. He dropped to the floor beside her and caught her hands. "Please, DelphI didn't mean to quarrel. But in your talk you're silly like a child. You're better here with Dorie. I'd feel better with you here."
"You don't love me or you wouldn't want to go away an' leave me like a prisoner," she burst out with a wild sob.
"Delph, don't talk like that. With you off someplace I'd always be worried. Can't you see, no matter where I amI can be thinkin' sort ofseein' almost. Spring come, it won't be spring there, but I'll know it is here, I cansort of see yougrowin' flowers an' such in Dorie's gardentalkin' an' laughin' with Katy an' Poke Easy when he comes homeevenin' come I can see you, mebbe at th' barn lookin' after Prissy or in th' kitchen here. Can't you see, Delph, what I mean?" His voice had grown gradually slower and slower, more hesitant and indistinct, and then it was nothing; his face buried in her lap.
She stared at the bright shine of his hair in the firelight, and wondered through her tears how he with his foolish notions could call her silly. "But that would be so little, Marsh. Nothin' when you get right down to it. Ifif I mean so much to you, you'd want me there."
"It's a lot, Delph. More than I've ever hadsomethin' to think on, an' know it's there. Couldn't we be satisfied with that much for a little whileso later we could be certain, I mean."
"Certain." She spat out the word with hatred, but added more gently, "You talk like an' old man, Marsh, like John, not like a young one lookin' ahead."
"To what?" he snapped. He got up suddenly, took his hat from the mantle, and without looking at her said in a hard choked voice, "I'm damned if I spend th' rest a my days quarrelin'," and walked stiff legged out of the room. He knew it was better to walk on, but at the door he must turn and look back to meet Delph's eyes, hungering after him, like arms that would fasten themselves about him.
He mastered an impulse to go back and say the things he had already tried to say; then walked heavily down the stairs, the iron
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cleats on his shoe heels ringing with such loudness, that Dorie, sitting in the side parlor, left off her reading, and came out to see if a stranger walked on her stairs. She glanced at him suspiciously, and when he did not speak she followed him to the back porch, and asked as he started down the steps, "Where you goin', Marsh?"
He stopped and tried to think what it was he had intended to do, but could think of nothing except Delph. Dorie looked out across the Cumberland and said, "Th' old Weaver Place looks mighty pretty on a sunny day like this."
He nodded and looked over the river, too. The day was dear and sunny with the wind more west than north, a warmish wind that would by sundown thaw the frozen ground and maybe bring rain or snow. "It's a good day for walkin'," Dorie said, and added with a quick glance at him, "Whyn't you take a walk over to Perce Higginbottom's. You could look over th' Weaver Place on th' wayJust see it, I mean. You've not much time left to look over th' country."
He was silent, staring at the gray slate roof of the brick house on the hill. In the sun the slates glittered like ice, and near them black limbs of apple and pear trees, indistinct in the distance, seemed like bits of black lace ruffled in the wind. Dorie sighed and smoothed her apron. "Poor Delph, it fairly tears my heart out to look at her. She's takin' it harder than I thoughtbut it's th' only sensible thing."
"How in th' hell do you suppose my heart feelsif I've got one?"
Her only answer to his outburst was a heavy sigh and a mournful glance over the river. "I'd never be one to say but what you're doin' th' sensible thing in more ways than one," she went on after a time. "Why, you'd be a fool to take a soft young thing like Delph to such a place, an' then there's th' cost.But pore Delph, I'm beginnin' to think she'll never see it that way. If somethin' happened to you down therea boiler blowed up or gas exploded, sayshe'd never get over it. Woman like she'd be thinkin' if she'd a gone she'd a had you for a little while." She paused, cleared her throat loudly as if to free it of sobs, and continued, ''On th' other hand if you did lose your head an' took her an' somethin' happenedwella lot a things that could happen to a woman in a place like that, things men like you know nothin' about, you'd be to blame, criminally." She repeated the last word with loud emphasis, flapped her apron indignantly, and went into the house.
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Marsh said, "Hell," and walked away, rapidly, as if he would like to run. Caesar the pup came running on short clumsy legs, but the barnyard gate was fastened. Caesar was forced to stop behind it and whine and beg with his greenflecked eyes for the privilege of chewing the raw hide laces in Marsh's shoes. Marsh opened the gate, scratched Caesar behind one ear, and uttered a long oath, expressing many of the things Delph put into her tears and Dorie into words.
Caesar put his paws on one shoe top, and smiled, and lifted the brown spots above his eyes with an air of knowing and of sympathy. "When I come back you'll never recollect me," Marsh said, and picked up the dog.
He looked hastily about in all directions, up to Delph's windows toward the back porch, and then at the barn, but saw no one. The barnyard was quiet; a dominecker rooster strutted in the sunshine, and a fat, full-breasted hen was still with admiration, then made as if to run away with a great to-do, squawking and cackling in pretended fright when the rooster followed. Somewhere Solomon bellowed with a low throat growling. Caesar squirmed and growled and lifted his ears, then was silent looking at Marsh as if he should be the one to decide whether he, Caesar, should go at once and put an end to Solomon or let him live a time
.
Marsh cuffed him gently on the nose and said, "Shut up," then looked along the high wire fence. In Dorie's yard there was a back gate opening on a path over the river hill. He glanced at the gate, then walked to the fence, and still with Caesar in his arms climbed a square or so, then vaulted over. He hurried down the steep hill side, slipping and sliding at times, with his shoes plowing furrows in the frozen moss and leaves. He met the twisting, curving path and followed it, down and around a narrow strip of bottom land that farther down the river widened into the stretch where Dorie's renters lived. He scarcely glanced at the houses and barns, but went on and came soon to what he hunted; a thick-trunked sycamore tree, the lower part of it hidden by the river bank where the land fell abruptly away to the river.
The place was much as he remembered it from seven years before. A spring bubbled from under one twisted root of the tree, while chained to another root was a skiff, painted red, with oars locked and looped in a smaller chain. He set Caesar in the boat, and
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broke the locks with a round granite-like stone. He sprang in then, drew up the chain, and slipped under the trailing willow trees out into the open water. Caesar was still in the boat, his tongue lolling with excitement, but his eyes unafraid and bright, fixed on his master. A wind furrowed the water and rattled the sycamore limbs, and overhead the sky was high and blue with puffs of gray white clouds like spring.
It was sundown when Marsh and Caesar returned to Fairchild Place, not by way of the river and a stolen boat, but in great state in Mr. Elliot's car. The old dogs ran in a thunder of barks to greet the car, but on seeing their child, the first to climb out, they fell silent with wonder. Caesar did not run whimpering to Brown Bertha his mother as befitted a runaway child, but waited for his master and fat Mr. Elliot to climb out of the car, and escorted them through the gate and a distance up the walk. Then and then only did he take notice of his parents. He walked with new dignity, strutted, ears lifted proudly, and tail held high and straight like a brown plumed flag.
Caesar had that day taken part in the stealing of a boat, the inspection of a farm, helped flag a ride on a truck to Hawthorne Town, visited a bank and sat in on a conference, had visited a saloon and watched clinchers of good corn whiskey put on the bargain, had visited the stockyards, lingered a time by the windows of a farm machinery store, had been to Roan's office on the second floor of a rickety frame building, had gone to another saloon with Roan, this time for a congratulator. There, they had met Mr. Elliot and had been whisked home, past the Weaver Place, over the Cumberland Ferry, across the lower corner of Burdine, over the Big South Fork Ridge and up the Salem Hill, and home.
Dorie and Katy heard the opening of the front hall door, and came from the kitchen to find Mr. Elliot standing uncertainly in the hall while Marsh bounded up the stairs calling, "Delph," at the top of his lungs. Dorie stood gaping after him until his heels disappeared, then turned to the mill owner for explanation. "Drinkin'?" she asked.
Mr. Elliot nodded, making of his double chin a triple. "Somemostly though it's th' fine investment he has just made. The old Weaver Place. It will be something good when the Cumberland Bridge is made and land goes sky high again."
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It was Katy who at last remembered to invite Mr. Elliot to hang his coat on the hall tree and come into the side parlor and warm. Dorie stood speechless with her eyes after Marsh. Delph heard his call and sprang from the bed where she had lain and stared with dry hot eyes at the ceiling for half the day. He flung open the door, and she was in his arms, eager to ask questions of where he had been and what he had done, but feeling somehow that the answers didn't matter. Marsh was different, all of him was hers, with no air of guilt or of trouble. "It's all fixed, Delph," he gasped, when he could get his breath from running up the stairs. "I won't be leavin' you, an' we'll always be together."
She felt weak, soft with love and forgiveness. South America didn't matter. Nothing mattered except that Marsh was back, gay and sure as she had always hoped he would be. They sat in a fat leather rocker by the fire, and he talked in brief excited sentences. She understood that he had made a large down payment on a farm, the old Weaver place, over the Cumberland. She listened and smiled like a child in a half-dreaming, half-waking sleep. Marsh was no farmer. He was an oil man. Some day he would go away and do the great things she dreamed for him. His going into the world would be delayed, but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered except that they would be together, now: and he was world enough, a whole world to understandand love.
"I wish it could be different, Delph," Marsh said. "I mean it would be fine to say, 'I've bought a farm an' own it,' but."
She jiggled excitedly on his knee. "But that's what you've done, silly, taken over a farm."
He nodded soberly. "Took it over, maybe, but hell, Delph, whyI don't even know if I can farm.I always wanted to have a try at it an' for a long while." He looked down at her, saw the fearless gaiety quivering in her eyes, and the debt he had made seemed less burdensome than an hour agoand if he failed, Delph need never know him for a failure, could think it only some small thing he had tried, could look at him always as she looked at him now, gay and certain that he could do what he wished to do. He tried to put a light not-caring in his voice as he said, "It may be thatwellif th' season's bad or we run low on money, I'd have to go away to work come fallth' way th' back hill farmers have to do sometimes."
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"Pshaw, runnin' out a money wouldn't kill us.Maybe by fall th' oil business in this country will be better, an' you can get a good job in Texas or California."
"Maybe so," he said, and sat rocking her and staring into the fire.
The business of buying the farm shone in a still brighter light when Marsh remembered Mr. Elliot and asked Delph to go down and meet him. Delph was shy in the presence of the great man; a millionaire she had heard said who must dash continually about the country to ask after his mills; and his wife was a fine northern lady with a cook and a maid. He beamed on Delph, slapped Marsh on the shoulder and said, "That's a fine investment, my boy, a good safe place to put your money. When they build that bridge over the Cumberland that land will double in price."
"Yes, it's been a fine farm in its day," Marsh said, and Delph wished he would use the word investment. In Mr. Elliot's mouth it had a mysterious, magical ring, like a corner stone laid for important things.
Dorie sat in the battered armless rocker which she loved, and beamed and rocked with dizzy speed, too happy to notice the creaking of the chair. Mr. Elliot stated somewhat hesitantly that he had come not only to drive Marsh home, but also to see if he couldn't buy an old hickory smoke cured ham from the Fairchild smoke house. Dorie had never been known to sell one of her special hams, cured by a secret process known only to Dorie. She made presents of them to her children and closest friends, baked them in wine or with maple sugar for times of high festivity, and ordinarily the mere suggestion of selling one to a person like Mr. Elliot would have brought at best a polite sarcastic refusal. But today so great was her goodwill for the world, including Mr. Elliot whom she despised, that Katy was sent dashing to the smoke house with directions to get the oldest, best-smelling ham she could find.
Supper that night was later, longer, and more topsy-turvy than ever. The cornbread burned while Dorie rummaged in the attic for odds and ends of furniture she thought Delph might be able to use. Katy, instead of turning a skillet of sizzling pork shoulder, stood with the meat fork in her hands and stared at the meat until it burned while she composed the piece she would write for the Westover Bugle on Marsh's buying of the Weaver place. Delph wandered about in a
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dreamy way and was good for nothing. When Marsh was in the kitchen, she had eyes only for him. It was pure happiness to smile at him and receive his smile, closer than a kiss yesterday. She had no doubt of his love for her. He had changed his plans and was doing a thing he had doubtless not wanted to do, all because he could not leave her
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Between the Flowers: A Novel Page 19
