Between the Flowers: A Novel

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  Delph had fainted.

  She revived soon, and found herself in a room, oddly familiar not to be her own. After a time she remembered; the dark wood paneling, the flowers that made her think of spring. The room where Burr-Head had been born and where she lay while he almost died; and where when he was better she had knelt by the window and watched the road and smelled the orchard bloom, and dreamed for himand for herself. Maybe he had only been the excuse. Oh, God, but she was such a fool.

  Dorie heard of what had happened, and came laughing and filled with talk, telling her not to be ashamed of having showed such a weakness as fainting. Even she had fainted once, a long time ago, but over some little nothing it had been, not a great thing like Marsh's turn for the better. She had to laugh at that. It only went to show that a body could never tellnot even when the chances were one in a million as they had been for Marsh.

  Delph lay and looked at the ceiling, and tried to listen to Dorie's talk. She could feel that old forced smile on her mouth like some familiar mask that she had taken off for a little time, but now must wear againfor always and always. "It'll seem strange to talk to him againan' find him like he used to be," she said, when she noticed after a time that Dorie was silent, maybe expecting her to say something.

  Dorie shook her head impatiently. "Lord, Delph, I never saw a woman like you. I've heard Marsh laugh lots a times an' say you'd ruined many a pretty flower bud just from pullin' it apart to see what color it would bean' I can believe it. When he was in th'

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  fever you had him dead an' buried, an' now you've got him settin' up in bed, discussin' th' primary elections, I reckin. He's not well, but he rallied after his fever brokethat's th' main thing. He can't be doin' but precious little talkin' for days, an' you mustn't be expectin' it." She glanced about the room. "Where is Sam? I thought he came up this way."

  Delph nodded. "He was th' first that told me."

  Dorie beamed, and was led into a long monologue in praise of Sam. Since Poke Easy's coming to live at home, and more and more as he demonstrated that he could both manage the farm and take a hand in law and county politics, Dorie was too contented with her world to hold any bitterness for Sam. Though she scolded now about his expensive car and his carelessness with money, she showed little anger, talked of him more as if he had been a lovable but spoiled child. "He was always a great one for seein' what he wanted an' goin' after it," she said, and added musingly, "I've been wonderin' lately what he set his head on now. When he came home he was supposed to take a month's vacation, but th' next thing I learned he'd asked for three months leave of absencean' now from th' books he's readin' I wouldn't be surprised if he struck out on some work of his own."

  "He'd like that," Delph said, "always to go huntin' down th' things he wanted to find."

  "He wouldn't be goin' about th' country," Dorie corrected, "maybe stuck in a laboratory an' experiment fields closer than Marsh sticks to his farmin'."

  "He'd still be huntin'," she said, and got up. She couldn't lie still in bed any longer, trying to recross in a few minutes all the country it had taken her so many painful weeks to cross.

  Dorie studied her. "You look kind a peaked, Delph. You ought to try to take things easy nowwhile th' nurses are still with Marsh. In a couple more weeks you'll have to be gettin' back into harnessdryin' an' cannin' an' fumin' around, tryin' to catch up on your work. Now, when you can rest easier in your mind on Marsh, I think if I was in your place I'd make Samhe wouldn't mindtake me around a little. Whyn't you have him drive you into Hawthorne to a picture show tonight? Some kind of silly, foolish somethin' would do you good."

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  Delph turned abruptly away and said with a sharpness she had never used with Dorie, "I don't went to be drivin' into any picture showor orgoin' any place with Sam."

  But Dorie only smiled, too happy at Marsh's improvement to have anything more than high good humor for all the world. "Pshaw, Delph, you're just tired an' cross as a cat. It all goes to show you need somethin' like thatyou've got to be patient nowin a few days you can be talkin' to Marsh. You mustn't even go about him tonight, but all th' time you can be thinkin' he's gettin' well." She smiled teasingly and stroked Delph's hair. "You may not notice ityou're married, but I'll bet there's many a woman that would give her eye teeth to be drivin' around with Sam.Not just because he's my boybut I do think he's one a th' best lookin' men in th' country, takes after his father in his winnin' ways an' he's got th' looks of th' men on my side in th' old days." She stopped and a calculating look came into her eyes while she counted something on her fingers, but after a time of trying she gave it up, and explained that she had always intended to figure out the kinship between her and Delph. There was some connection from away back between the Costellos and the Dodsons, but it was so far back, all the way to Azariah, maybe, that she could never get it straight, but some rainy day she and Delph must get together and figure out their cousin-ship.

  Delph listened and smiled, and wished for nothing except that Dorie would go and she could be alone; she didn't think that ever in her life she had wanted so much to be alone. She wished she could take a long lone ride down a lonesome pine ridge, or go anyplace where there were no people and no one to see. In order to hasten Dorie's going, she put on her bonnet and made some excuse about having to go to the store; and when Dorie continued to linger, warn her not to go lest she faint on the way, she had a moment's terror that she would break into wild screaming laughter or senseless crying.

  However, when Dorie had gone at last she only stood on the back porch and stared down into the valley; but when Myrtle the cook came with some talk of what she would fix for supper, she dashed down the backstairs, caught up a split basket on the back porch and ran down the road toward her own house. She wondered why she ran or where she would go to be away from people, and when she came to the barn lane she turned and walked through the

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  corn field, remembering with a rush of thankfulness that through a strip of the corn she had planted late beans. She could pick the beans and have an excuse for staying alone until full dark came.

  She walked down the rows of yellowing corn and pulled the little goose craw beans and dropped them into her tucked up apron. The afternoon shadow lay thick on the field, and the air was cool touched with the promise of fall and of winter. She had not worked long when she heard Burr-Head behind her calling, "Delph, you're droppin' all th' beans on th' ground 'stead of in your apron," and he ran up to her, his hands filled with the plump green beans.

  She took the beans from his outstretched hands, and he looked into her face and asked, "Sick, Delph? You look peaked. Myrtle said I'd mebbe better hunt you. You didn't look so well."

  "No. I'm all right, Burr-Head."

  He ran away to look at a pumpkin a few rows away, but came back soon and looked at her and asked again, "Sick, Delph?"

  She shook her head.

  "There's water in your eyes, Delph."

  "It's this little cold night wind."

  "You dropped some more beans, Delph."

  "It's no matter.There's lots of beans."

  She walked on to other hills, but soon he was with her again, tugging at her dress. "Oh, Delph, come an' see this whoppin' big punkin."

  She followed him to the great pumpkin, watched in silence while he smiled and patted it and said, "Punkin, punkin what a 'nawful fat thing you are," and the way he smiled, his eyes like Marsh's eyes when he looked at his corn.

  She pulled a sticky bean leaf from her skirt and looked at it as she said, "Burr-Head, whatwhat do you mean to be when you are older?"

  He sat on the ground with one arm over the pumpkin and pondered. "I can't ever make up my mind," he said, and wrinkled his nose and laughed. "I don't know but what'll mebbe be a corn farmer like Marshbut I'd like to have a lot a pretty milk cows like that man up by Burdinean' I'd like to grow a lot a grapes an' make a lot a wine like Mrs. Elliot says they do in Francean' ohso many things I don't know."
He lay back on his arms and studied the sky

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  with narrowed eyes as Marsh often did. "I want me some blue-blooded horses from th' bluegrass countryan' I'd like to have a lot of pretty sheep an' goats like Mrs. Elliot says they have in Switzerlandan'." He looked from the sky into his mother's eyes, then sat up suddenly, saying all in a breath, "But, pshaw, Delph, I'll be livin' with you an' Marsh an' my little sister in th' stone house till I'm big as Dorie's Poke Easy."

  "Stone house?"

  "Pshaw, you know, Delph, th' one we'll live in when Elliots buy th' brick house, you know th' one Marsh has been a buildin' in his head. Don't you know about it, Delph?"

  She shook her head and smiled. "Supposeyou tell me?"

  "You know, with a big cellar an' chimneys, up where he planted th' black locust trees by Solomon's pasture. It'll have a great big fire place, wider than two rows of corn, an'Delph, you look sick as all get out. Your eyes shine like a sick cow's eyes." He got up and whacked the earth from the seat of his overalls as he had seen Marsh do. "Let's go up to th' Elliots, Delph. You've got your aporn full a beans anyhow."

  "I brought a basket. I'll fill it full. You run on."

  "But it's nigh supper time."

  "I knowbut I don't think I want any suppernow."

  He hesitated about going, and stood pulling a bean now and then or digging in the soft ground with the toe of one shoe. "D-e-elph, don't you like th' stone house? It's goin' to be mighty finewhen we build it."

  She smiled and patted his shoulder. "Sure I like th' stone house, Burr-Head. Run on to your supper now."

  He called Caesar and walked away through the corn, but now and then he stopped and looked back at her and waved, but the last time, even though he called, "Goodbye, Delph," she was looking straight overhead at the sky and never saw or heard him.

  She walked on and gathered beans, but most fell on the ground. It didn't matter where the beans fell. Nothing mattered; it didn't seem to matter much that she could never dream again for Burr-Head or plan how it would be to live in the brick house. The stone house would be thick and strong and solid, ugly; never the brick house with stained glass in its parlor windows, a graceful winding

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  stair, and fireplaces of marble and tile, and windows from which she could see the cars go by. She stood on tip-toe to reach a high growing bean, and as she pulled it away she saw between the rustling blades of corn the wide reach of the sky, high and deep and blue, shut away as if the narrow corn leaves were a prison through which she must always see the skyand the world.

  When the twilight deepened she went to stand by Marsh's window. She stood a time behind the morning glory vine, its leaves were beginning to brown now, and after putting her car close among the leaves, she heard breathing, light it was, no louder than a baby's breath, but regularstrong somehow through its weakness. In the kitchen black Emma, preparing some broth for Marsh, smiled at her, and Mrs. Redmond the big nurse was more cordial than she had ever been. She sat a time with her on the back porch, and talked between sips of her after supper coffee. "You know," she said, "experienced as I am, I couldn't see much chance for him. Sometimes it even seemed a sin for him to linger onand sufferand you eat your heart out through all those weeksalmost ten it's been."

  "It seems like that many years," Delph said, and thought that time, the house and days and minutes of it, was the poorest measure for life of all.

  She went back to the brick house, and that night wrote Fronie and John of Marsh's miraculous recovery, or chance for recovery, and filled the letter with words of gladness.

  The night and the following days were endless reaches of gray time, empty of everything except a kind of waiting that made all things, be it eating or singing to Burr-Head, seem less the doing of a thing than a means of living through time while she waited. And why she waited, or for what, she never knew, nor did she ask herself.

  There was one day, for a little while, a time when she forgot to wait and lived instead. She and Mrs. Elliot were on the upstairs back porch making crepe paper dresses for the school children to wear in the Arbor Day program, when Myrtle came to say that Delph and Mrs. Elliot and Burr-Head had a caller in the front hall, and she was not supposed to say who it was.

  Both Mrs. Elliot and Delph wondered who it might be, and rushed about to tidy their hair and pull crepe paper from each

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  other's clothing. Burr-Head ran away before Delph could comb his hair, and in a second was shouting up the stairs that it was nobody but Dorie's Sam playing make-believe.

  Delph walked slowly down the hall and down the wide front stairs, taking care that Mrs. Elliot should always be in front of her. There was Sam in the hall, looking tall and strange and handsome in an immaculate white linen suit and a blue tie that matched his eyes. He stood with his hat in one hand and a box of candy in the other and waited at the foot of the stairs. He bowed to Delph and to Mrs. Elliot. ''My mother, Mrs. Dorie Dodson Fairchild, who lives on the next hill, sent me to entertain you ladiesyou all were very lonesome, she said.'' And he bowed and smiled a playful mocking smile that made Delph want to cry.

  But she smiled and said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Fairchild," and curtsied as she had been taught to do by her mother when a very little girl, and so did Mrs. Elliot, and they all laughed, Burr-Head most of all to see the grownups play at being people they were not.

  Mrs. Elliot felt that the occasion demanded at least tea in the front living room. Much to Burr-Head's delight they all sat in the wide shadowy room and drank tea from Mrs. Elliot's best and thinnest china, and had beaten biscuit topped with cherry preserves.

  Now and again Burr-Head looked at his mother and wondered why she sipped her tea so slowly, and why she ate none of the beaten biscuit and cherry preserves, and only nibbled at a piece of the candy Sam had broughtbeautiful candy wrapped in gold and silver paper.

  Then he, too, forgot to eat his candy when Mrs. Elliot played the piano and Delph sang, not the songs she sang in church, but nicer onessome she had learned from Mrs. Elliot. He always liked to hear his mother sing; she said so many things and he could hear so much, sometimes there was the heaven of the little speckled pig, or again there was the sea with ships and storms, but today he thought the song was neither heaven nor the sea, but sad like the night when Little Lizzie picked her flowers.

  He wanted to cry and wished for Marsh, and when Delph would not sing the song he wanted, gay and filled with tra-la-la-las, he slipped from the room and ran down the hill and to the window by the morning glory vines. He whispered softly through the leaves as

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  the nurse had told him he must always do when she caught him one day calling and calling and Marsh did not answer. That was days ago; since then Marsh had never answered, and the last time he had tried two days ago the nurse had sent him away. Today, he forgot Delph, the nurse, and everything and everybody when an answer came through the morning glory vines. The voice was weak, but it was Marsh's all right. "Well, sontell Solomon to quit his bellerin'an' carryin' ontell them mules a minethey'd better set their heads for workan' tell that Burr-Head a minehe'd better start bein' good.I'll be onto 'em allpretty soon."

  Burr-Head jumped up and down, and Caesar the fool began such a barking and running in circles that there was noise enough to wake the dead. The nurse was out the door and after him in an instant and Burr-Head ran away to the garden gate, and stood swinging on it, ready to run if she kept coming after him. He was half afraid of the big woman in white. He waited while she went back to the house, and was sneaking again to the window when she poked her head around the house corner. She was smiling and motioning him to come to her. He edged gradually nearer at first and then he ran when he understood what she wanted of him. If he would promise to be very quiet, ask no questions or try to make Marsh talk, and if he washed his hands real clean, he could go sit five minutes by his fatherand above all things he must not cry.

  "I'm no girl," Burr-Head said, and washed h
is hands and went swaggering in to see his father. But at the door he stopped, and Mrs. Redmond had to give him a little push. "Just look at his eyes," she whispered. "You'll find your father there.''