3stalwarts

by Unknown

  Next morning, she described it to Melville.

  “Foxes,” he said. “It’s been a poor season for small animals. They must be in the marshes hunting mice.”

  Dorothy nodded.

  “I heard them last night, too. As if they minded cold.”

  “We used to hear wolves sometimes when we first came here,” said Melville, pouring cream into the churn— they planned on butter for a treat. “I knowed they couldn’t harm us, but I was always fearful when I heard them. They would come down over the lake, perhaps from Canady. A pack. You’d hear them miles away and heading for you. Then they would go by some place far off.”

  “I saw one once,” said Dorothy. “A fearsome sight. It used to be easy to have children in on time for dark. They were afraid of wolves. But now the youngest ones will come in when they’re minded. Wolves don’t ‘fraid them any more.”

  Mary shivered. Foxes, she said, were bad enough for her.

  “You wouldn’t have minded,” Dorothy said. “Only that baby in you frightened you.”

  “I was so cold. But after I had heard them he moved once. Real hard. I wasn’t feared of them then. I got up and put on socks and a shirt of Jerry’s. I was real warm after.”

  But the cabin had grown smaller since that night. She began to move with a sense of care, deliberately measuring off the little spaces between the hearth and the table, the table and the dresser, the wheels and the side of the Melvilles’ bed. Outside, the barn seemed farther from the house and the snow walls to the path much higher; but, oddly, the sky had limited the land— the world looked small.

  Yet in the evening Mary would listen to the singing kettle or the slow drip of the roast into its pan or the steady beat of the dasher in the churn, and the sight of Dorothy’s strong, manlike hands would comfort her. Then she would sing softly, conscious of the harmony these things made with her own feeling.

  “Shining Dagger” pleased her. She would hum it at first, but gradually the words would steal into the antique melody:—

  “It is no use to ask my mother; She too intends to set us free. So go, my dear, and court some other, And I no more will trouble thee.”

  The walls seemed to stand more sturdily against the snow. The fire would burn more evenly. The kettle would lull its note more hollowly in its round belly.

  “Oh, I can climb the tallest tree, love, And I can reach the highest nest, And I can pluck the sweetest rose, love, But not the heart that I love best.”

  Jerry would seem not so far away; and the winter a shorter space. The warm air of the cabin would grow brighter with the candlelight.

  Sometimes, shyly, Melville would ask her for some other tune. He liked the old tunes, and it pleased Mary to be asked. It reminded her of her girlhood, when she sang for her mother. She would smile at him and Dorothy; their homely faces became kind in her eyes. Perhaps she would sing them “Daily Growing” or “Warranty Deed,” or a newer song, like “Highland Mary,” or one of Tom Moore’s, or a little thing she had once heard and remembered for its tune: —

  “Love, lady, love! There’s always joy in loving, But sigh not when you find That man is fond of roving. For when the summer bee Takes wing through beauty’s bower, He knows not which to choose Among the many flowers.”

  March changed. There was a thaw, when all the snow seemed sinking on the marsh and the taller heads of grass showed their broken backs. But then the snow came again. The wind was boisterous, the cabin shook to its pummeling. At dusk the barn would be full of chaff-dust and the lantern flame would quiver. The beasts stirred uneasily. Their eyes kept swinging. Now and then the heifer would lift her muzzle and bawl, and the sound of her voice would be deafening in the narrow space. Mary felt her head swim, and her knees quiver on the overburdened pail.

  The days grew longer. They ate supper before twilight; but the snow lay as heavily against the walls, the top fresh as before from the night’s down-drifting; and the rotting that was going on underneath it was concealed.

  Mary felt a desperation growing in her. They had not heard from Jerry for two months. At times, at night, she was afraid. She would begin to wonder whom he might be staying with. She made pictures of him to herself meeting imaginary girls. The fitfulness of the wind would shake her, and while she slept she dreamed.

  But little by little, as the time drew on, her being became calmer. As the snow went each day, she grew more aware of the possession of her that the child was taking. She united little events with their significance to herself. Spring, she felt, would not stir her as it was beginning already to stir the Melvilles; for time became centred in her consciousness with the end of summer.

  4

  “Some men work hard; they haven t understanding’

  But the spring came with a suddenness that captured Mary after all. One dawn she woke with a sense of freshness in the loft. There was no sound of wind, but the wind was blowing. She could feel it on her face, a warm draft from the window; the curtains were lifting gently; and on the roof was a sound she had forgotten.

  Steady, gentle, it seemed to draw her being out. She felt herself relaxing on the bed, as if her brain let go one by one of all her nerves, and they were soothed and sleepy. She could feel it in the air. The snow had turned to rain… .

  All the world was enveloped in the greyness— no sunset showed, and there would be no moon, no stars. She was alone. Behind her in the black gulf of the barn door she heard one of the oxen snuffle softly.

  Then her senses jerked… .

  He was coming from Onondaga way. She had recognized his step the moment she heard it. She strained her eyes against the misty darkness. The feet sludged towards her steadily. Sometimes the sound was faint, then it came loud and close and she made her voice ready; and then again it faded out, almost to nothing. And suddenly, when she was sure she had a minute yet to wait, she saw a swirl in the darkness and his figure standing there while he peered for the cabin lights.

  “Jerry.”

  She could make out the turning of his head.

  “Jerry,” she called.

  “Mary!”

  He had discovered her. Her heart swelled to see the life reentering his stride. He came close. She smelled him now, hot, his clothes steaming. He put his arms round her and bent down to kiss her. His face, like hers, was wet with mist.

  “How did you know I was coming?”

  “I heard you back by the barn.”

  “How are you, Mary?”

  “Fine.”

  Her hands felt of his hard body through the wet clothes.

  “I’m glad to come back. It didn’t seem that spring would ever come.”

  “You’re soaking wet.”

  He laughed.

  “I doubt if you could get a horse through from Onondaga. But when I got there before noon I couldn’t stop.”

  He took her arm and together they threshed back to the kitchen door and Jerry lifted Mary’s pail.

  “Hello, there,” he said. “I’ve just come in from milking.”

  “Well, by dog!”

  Melville jumped up from his sprouting… .

  All that night and all next day, the rain sluiced over the roof. They talked and talked. They made Jerry tell them every last small thing that he had seen.

  “I bought and hauled in timber for four locks… .

  “They’re ready waiting now at Geddes, and Camillus, and Jordan, and Port Byron… .

  “Caleb will buy for Montezuma locks. I came out that way… .

  “It’s quite a town, two churches, thirty houses, nearly… .

  “The Cayuga River’s lifting. It floods back near six miles, they say. Bad digging… .

  “I had the intermittent fever. …”

  “And I wasn’t by,” thought Mary. But he looked well. His face was thinner and in some way he seemed to have grown taller. His eyes had a shine in them when he looked at her. She could tell his gladness. She felt a ripeness growing in herself, as if her being were at work in sorting out her feelings.
/>   They had a special dinner. Dorothy cooked a smoked-beef pie and brought out pickled currants.

  “Work will start next week if wagoning will open,” Jerry said. “As soon as maybe Caleb will send up the men. …”

  Melville was sanding his plough that afternoon. Sun was shining in a watery sky and the marsh beyond the windows stretched out grey and hubbly, as if the old clumps of grass were thrusting shoulders up against it.

  “I saw Hunter in Marcellus. He was hauling in to Utica. He’ll haul for Caleb again this year. He had a load of merino bales for Oriskany milling. He tells me Rochester’s a growing town. …”

  Dorothy smiled and smiled. From time to time her eyes would swing to Mary.

  “Haven’t we cared for her fine?” she would ask proudly. “Don’t she look handsome to you, Jerry?”

  Jerry grinned and laid his hand on Mary’s.

  “She does, surely.”

  Dorothy would walk away about some job or other, still smiling to herself.

  In the evening they had to show Jerry what they had made that winter. There was the coverlet completed. He felt it with his hand. “Real pretty. Look at those red stars. You might have drawed them.” There was bedding made, a flannel blanket. “They look small,” said Jerry.

  “It’s time you made a cradle, I should say. You’ve been an unproviding man as ever lived, I’d think.”

  Jerry grinned.

  “Have you got boards?” he asked Melville.

  “I’ve got a piece of half-inch pine,” said Melville.

  After supper, then, there was a sound of sawing as Jerry made the cradle. A simple box to fit the blanket. He whittled out the rockers with a knife. Next morning he floundered out to the wood patch and came home an hour later, red-faced, hot, and dripping, with birch wands. He peeled them carefully and worked them into bows and set them into the sides of the box.

  “For a hood,” he explained.

  He hung the bows against the chimney to dry and stiffen into shape.

  “Like a regular Pennsylvany wagon,” Melville said. “I’d never have thought of that myself.”

  They all admired it— Dorothy, Melville, and Jerry. Mary smiled to see them tentatively poke it with their feet as they sat talking. Its rockers made a little sound… .

  Over the marsh the snow seemed to collapse. It fell in in broken dish-like holes, and the grass showed through. Ponds of yellow water spread out overnight. Plover flew over it through the mist, calling. Their voices came at dawn and sunset, marking the day… .

  The road opened suddenly. On the day after, Jerry said that he would have to go down to Number Two to see that everything was ready for the men. Dorothy suggested that he take the horse and drive himself down. Mary could ride with him and drive back. So they harnessed the old horse and set out towards Cossett’s.

  The sky had cleared. It was pale blue, for April, full of sunlight and unaccustomed warmth. The old horse wiggled his mulish ears and took his own route and pace; for the road was like a long, thin pudding, clutching the wheels, and treacherously rutted with ribbon-like gleaming pools.

  Number Two was an exact replica of Number One in its early stages. The shanty was identical with all the others along the line. It made Jerry grin to see it and think of old Self Rogers. He told Mary about the old man, traveling the route and setting up these shanties against his conscience.

  The well of the lock was two feet deep in water.

  “We’ll have to drain it,” Jerry said. He examined all sides carefully. “There’s too much water to have just drained in. I think we will need piles.”

  But there was nothing he could do and he and Mary walked round to the shanty and the horseshed. In the shed, they found fresh droppings and the marks of hoofs. After studying them a while, Jerry said, “That’s Roberts’s pony. I wonder what he was doing here.”

  Together they took the boards off the shanty sashes and opened the doors. The shanty was full of the odor of winter. They stood to one side while the dampness drew past them, mouldy and dank, like fleeing ghosts that one could nearly see. Then they lit a roaring fire in the stove and sat together to eat their put-up luncheon.

  “It makes me think of being back in Utica,” said Mary. “Do you remember how we picnicked out with Bourbon, Jerry?”

  He smiled at her over his bread and butter.

  “Yes, I do. We were new-wedded folks then, weren’t we? It seems a long time ago. And it’s less than a year. I wasn’t earning but three dollars a week, those days.”

  “It does seem long ago, Jerry.” She eased her tired body on the hard bench; but her face was serene with remembered sweetness. The sunlight shone in upon her, putting copper on her hair. She had let her bonnet back upon her shoulders, and the bow nestled close under her chin.

  “I’m anxious to get back to work,” said Jerry. “I wonder what Roberts was doing here.”

  He had his answer almost immediately. Over the road they had come by sounded bells. The notes were slow in the lazy sunshine.

  At the door, Jerry cried, “It’s Hunter’s team.”

  Mary joined him. She moved heavily and leaned herself against the doorjamb. Before she gazed out over the marsh she took a look at Jerry. There was a slight mist in her eyes; they were soft grey to-day. She thought, “The work has caught him again.” Her breast rose softly. She had had him for so short a while. Then she turned her eyes to follow his.

  It was Hunter, sure enough. She recognized his black leaders and the rain-streaked swaying top of his great wagon. He himself was striding in the mud beside the sorrel wheeler. The ringing bells sparkled faintly. Cataracts of muddy water ran back from the wheels, and on either side of the road the stagnant water trembled, shivering the reeds. In clearer places a reflection was born, first the horses two by two, then Hunter, then the wagon’s box, a grey blue in the bright blue of the sky.

  Behind, two more wagons lumbered. Men like monkeys clustered on the loads. She could make out Edwin Brown, the cook, and the funny, froglike figure of Cosmo Turbe crouched down beside his inseparable big friend.

  Hunter stopped his team beside the well. The other wagons drew past it to the shanty. The men jumped down. Those that had worked before came forward to greet Jerry. Hunter and the cook took off their hats to Mary; but the others stayed where they were, eyeing distastefully the flooded hole.

  Hunter said to Jerry, “I’ve brought you up a new contraption. Roberts says there’s quicksand underneath the lock. You will need piling. Caleb said to tell you he was sending in the piles tomorrow. So I brought the engine for driving them and here’s the man that works it.”

  From the rear of the Pennsylvania wagon strutted a small, fussy man with a bowler hat on his head and a quarter-inch black velvet ribbon round his neck against the quinsy.

  “Name is Bemis,” he introduced himself. He peered into the lock. “I’ve drove piles in everything but quicksand, but they ought to go down easy.”

  Mary had gone back to Melville’s wagon. From the seat she watched Jerry taking hold, ordering the unloading. Edwin Brown was yelling for his helper. The other men, under the direction of Bemis, were hauling out heavy timbers from Hunter’s wagon and setting them in line upon the ground. Mary spoke to the horse and turned him homeward. No one noticed her going.

  An insufferable loneliness pressed her down… .

  But on the afternoon of the following day, Hunter came back past Melville’s farm. He stopped in a moment.

  “They’ve set up Bemis’s engine,” he said. “They’re about ready to use it.” While he loitered, they heard it begin, a heavy thump. Then there was silence for a while, and then again the thump. All the rest of the afternoon, long after Hunter had left them, Mary and Dorothy heard that dull thumping going on. It was a small sound at that distance, but even so they felt the weight of the blow.

  “It’s like a bittern,” Dorothy said, “only it comes too slow.”

  For four days it went on steadily. Thump— and then the interval in which she
heard the life upon the farm, the noise of the blackbirds returning to their nesting, Melville’s voice talking to the oxen in the far lot, the dithery sound of Dorothy’s hoe in the garden patch. It was like a clock with an irregular tick, marking the long minutes. Her nerves were growing sensitive to time. She felt each blow, bringing her back into the world to listen again, and then the slow resurgence of herself, while her inner ears were stretched.

  On the fifth day, the engine stopped; moved onward, it was reported, to the lock and aqueduct at the Otisco outlet. For a long time Mary was oppressed by silence, and time stood still for her… .

  Almost daily now, men or wagons were going past into the marsh. Digging moved at a fast pace. All through the swamp the sections were occupied with men, teams, and shovels. Loads of hay went past for the horses, lumbering heavily along the corduroy, the wagon reaches squeaking; edible-wagons for the men; loads of tools sent in by the contractors; wheelbarrows made of iron to hold mud, root-cutting spades shaped like the marks on playing cards; sharp ploughs and scoops. New things, new horses, new men every day. But the novelty wore off. One morning, when she heard Dorothy’s voice shrill with excitement, she was slow in getting up. She would have missed the sight entirely if the young man bringing it had not unhitched his team to ask for water for them.

  What she saw standing in the road was an enormous pair of twelve-foot wheels, connected by an axle eight feet long, made of a tree-trunk. The spokes of a third wheel were fixed into this axle and bore on their ends a monstrous grooved tire coiled with rope. While he watered his horses the young man explained that it was an engine he had invented for pulling stumps. The big wheels were chocked on either side of the stump, a chain was fastened to it and the axle. Then he hitched the horses to the rope that wound around the inner wheel; a simple piece of leverage, he said. The stump came up like pie and the big wheels trundled it off the line.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said to Mary. “I do like buttermilk.”