3stalwarts

by Unknown

  Mrs. Melville? Such a little guzzler for a girl!” “Drink,” thought Mary, “drink. There’s more, and more, and more. There will be always more.” The baby would begin to sigh and loiter in her sucking. Her round cheeks would redden over the new inward warmth. The flush would spread in a recognized progression. The ears, the eyelids, forehead, even the skin between the tiny, separate hairs that made her eyebrows, would grow hot. A distillation, silvery as a night sheen on red clover heads, would come forth upon the skin. Only the button nose stayed white from its own pressure. Yet even while the baby drowsed and woke, suckled and drowsed in always longer spells, Mary was conscious of her inexhaustible outpouring. Even at last, when it slept in surfeit, rocking its head like a honey-drunken bee, a few last drops would ooze forth on its lazy mouth.

  Then the feet of the two women would move softly here and there. Mary would lie quiet, with the still ease of new being. So the evening stole in, and she herself dozed in the sound of firelight.

  She did not listen to their quiet going-off to bed: Dorothy and Melville looking down; Melville’s eyes embarrassed, Dorothy’s bright; Jerry’s good-night, the three days he stayed after the child came, when Ma Hovey went outside for nightfall and they were alone.

  Jerry sat close to the bed; the low stool brought his head just level with the pillow.

  “I’ve got to be leaving soon, Mary.”

  She would hush him with her hand. His dark thin face was still. His hair made a shade against the light. It was a wonder to her that the baby had fair hair.

  “I’d want to name it, now, before I go.”

  “What do you want to name it, Jerry?”

  He found it hard to meet her eyes.

  “I’d like to name it Mary. I would. Do you remember when you told me, after we finished the first lock? I said boys’ names. And you said what if it was a girl? And you were right.”

  She smiled. It made her happy. Then he kissed her and stole out to his bed in the barn. She heard his good-night voice to old Ma Hovey; and Ma Hovey came in and helped her make ready for sleep. They were alone, then, like two women at a mystery, when the night was breathing just be-yond the window. And she wished this time might never end.

  6

  “He said the woman had a baby”

  Mary sat in the cabin doorway sewing patches on a shirt of Jerry’s. It was the first time in many days that she had thought of him to mend his clothes; and all she could find for her penitence was this tattered shirt he had left behind two months ago. Dorothy said that the shirt was not worth mending: “I wouldn’t touch no shirt of Robert’s was so disconnected.”

  The elbows were completely raveled out; and a piece of the tail had been cut off and sewed for an extra pocket on the breast. The small, uneven, manlike stitches made her face sober.

  October was coming in. Down beside the marsh the maple which stood with half its roots in water was touched on the northward side with pinkish red. The marsh grass was acquiring yellow, and the meadow had turned a duller green. The blackbirds flew in mammoth flocks, higher than in summer; and when they settled, the grass was jarred with their unceasing bickers. The arch of the sky was untouched blue; and the sun shone strongly.

  Mary had the baby in the cradle on the doorstone. She was sleeping now; and from time to time Mary touched the cradle with her foot to hear the rockers mutter on the uneven sill. Then she looked up and out across the marsh. Many of the diggers had passed on. One shanty smoke with which she had been long familiar rose no more; and Melville said that the contractor had his section finished. You could see his section shaped, the prism for the water, and the towpath wide enough for horses, and on the other side the narrow berm. But here and there for miles both east and west the little knots of men were digging slowly. To Mary it was all a dream. She thought of it now, vaguely, for the shirt in her lap and the needle in her fingers. The needle needed threading. Mary stared westward.

  Far away she saw a dust cloud traveling along the fence. It approached her with an unwavering swiftness that even to her eye carried a familiar gait. After a little she saw the horse’s head, held high, with the small ears freshly pointed, and then on the seat of the wagon a figure she recognized immediately.

  She made herself ready to wave; for he was traveling at such a pace that she supposed he wished to reach Utica at nightfall in the very least. His head was bared to the sun and his fat red cheeks were windburned. He grasped the reins in a fat hand and Mary saw the mouth of the racing horse half opened by his weight of wrist. There was no mistaking Caleb Hammil.

  As he came to the corner of Melville’s first field he spied Mary seated in the cabin door. He waved his hat, yanked the right rein— and Bourbon took the turn-in skillfully, lifting the inside wheel and snapping the rear ones into line. He braced his feet and slid to stop.

  Never heeding him, Hammil threw the reins over the dashboard and hopped off. His fat face beamed.

  “Hello there,” he said. “How are you now?”

  Mary smiled.

  “Just finely,” she said, looking down.

  The fat man followed her gaze, and instantly dropped his voice to a whisper.

  “So that’s the baby. A girl, I’ve heard tell; a pretty one. Can I look at her?”

  “Yes. She’s sleeping now.”

  “Just to see her face. Don’t wake her, Mrs. Fowler. I’ll bend down.”

  He knelt before the cradle’s foot and with infinite pains stretched one fat hand forth to lift the blanket’s edge. His breath whistled from the effort of kneeling.

  “It’s a pretty baby. Takes after you, I judge,” he whispered. “I’m real glad it came out well.”

  He let the blanket fall back into place and carefully got to his feet.

  “Can I set down and visit a little spell?”

  “Yes, please. But let’s go in. Can’t I get you something?”

  “No. I’ve ate an hour since.”

  “Some milk— a piece of pie?”

  They moved softly into the cabin.

  “What kind of pie?”

  Mary smiled. The contractor always made her think of an eager little boy. He had no consciousness of self.

  “Fresh currant, Mr. Hammil.”

  “Well, a little piece.”

  She fetched it. He had seated himself at table with his hat between his outstretched hands. She sat down opposite and watched him eat a quarter piece of pie and drink his milk. Now and then he would look shyly at her.

  Finally he wiped his lips and said, “Mrs. Fowler, you know I’m fond of Jerry.”

  Mary said nothing.

  “He’s a good boy. But his ambitiousness is likely to do him harm some day.”

  “What is it?” she asked quietly.

  “We’re going to split. When he does Byron lock, his contract with me’s finished. That’s going to be next month. I made a special trip to see him about staying with me.”

  “Yes, Mr. Hammil?”

  “Yes. I wanted him to work for me. I’ve been paying him well and I offered him some more. But he said it wasn’t enough. He was talking kind of high and mighty. I didn’t pay no attention to that, for I was a young lad myself. But I showed him I couldn’t pay him any more and make a proper profit under my contracts.” His face was sober. “Where are the Melvilles?”

  Mary said, “They’re out back in the lot, digging the potatoes.”

  Hammil nodded.

  “I just didn’t want to have them break in onto us.” He looked down at his fists, which made a gathering gesture. “I don’t know what it is. But Jerry appears changed to me. I noticed it back when we completed Num-ber One. And all the way home from Jordan I thought I’d drop in to ask if you knew what it was on his mind.” He turned his face embarrassedly to the window. “That’s why I took this road instead of the Pike.”

  Mary too looked from the window. She didn’t want to hurt him by telling him that Jerry was jealous. Jerry, she saw, had no right to be.

  “I don’t know.”
r />   “I thought he might have told you it.” Hammil sighed. “That’s why I determined to stop by.”

  Mary felt a kind of hush steal into her.

  “What happened?”

  Hammil said, “I guess I lost my temper. I told him I had brought him out of nothing and that he owed me gratitude. I’m sorry I said it, because he’s earned his earnings. I haven’t had to be out here at all. He’s done the locks about a third again as fast as what I had expected. He’s a fine workman and knows twice as much about lock-building as I’ll ever get into my noodle. That’s one main reason that I hate to see him go. I’ve got other men working on my culvert contracts, but not one capable of making locks. But it ain’t all that. I’d thought that maybe soon I’d make him partner with me. Only he’s too young and too unsettled just a while yet. Good land, ma’am, it took me ten years to get ahead the way he’s done in one. He don’t realize he’s made his progress because I had my money back of him. But then he’s more able than I was. I don’t deny. Roberts and Mr. Wright, the both of them, say he’s doing the best timber work they have on this-here section.”

  His face was a comical mixture of injured pride and real affection.

  Mary felt her heart lean towards him.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I thought, when you saw him, and found him favorable, you might just say that Hammil would consider partnership right now. He’s getting on”— Hammil glanced at the cradle sunning in the doorway— “and he ought to get established. Do you know what his ideas are?”

  Mary said, “He wants to work westward with the canal, I think— And then him and Roger Hunter talk of starting a boat business.”

  “That would take money. He’s earning fast and saving nearly all. But he can’t put money all in boats and start a home for you two.”

  “I know,” said Mary. She hesitated, testing words for meanings. “Since the baby there got born, I’ve been thinking. It seems someways Jerry’s younger than I am. He’s got a kind of feeling after this canal. It ain’t just money to him.”

  Hammil snorted angrily.

  “I thought he had some fool idea. He’d better stick with me. Of course it’s money. That’s the whole notion of it. I don’t expect him to skimp work and wood— he knows that, for I told him. But I thought he wanted money.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “Yes. But what in nation does he want besides? It does beat all.”

  “Yes. It does. I guess we can’t understand.”

  “He raises my bile. He needs a lesson.” Suddenly the fat man caught Mary’s sympathetic eye. He looked confounded. Then they laughed together. “Just the same,” he said, “what I told you goes. Ungrateful or uppish or the Lord knows what, I’ve got a fondness for him. I have for both of you,” he grinned again winningly and slapped his leg, “for the whole three of you.”

  Mary said, smiling, “I don’t think Jerry is ungrateful. And I’ll always remember you kindly, you and Mrs. Hammil.”

  Caleb waved his hand.

  “Oh, that work was nothing. My wife said she never had such launder-ing and makes a moan about it now you’re gone.” His face grew tender. “Once Jerry told me how you and him met up. I guess that’s what got me fond of you. But I promised never to tell anyone. You see he’s proud.”

  Mary nodded.

  “That’s it,” cried Caleb. “He’s proud-proud as the black devil.”

  “Yes,” said Mary. “Sometimes it makes him worry.”

  Caleb looked as if everything were settled.

  “Hell!” he said. “I’m proud myself! I never thought of that. You’ll tell Jerry, won’t you?”

  “I won’t see him for some time, most probably.”

  In the act of getting up to go, Caleb’s jaw struck open.

  “I’d almost forgot! He asked me to tell you to come out and meet with him in Montezuma.”

  “Move?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how?” Mary was astonished.

  “Hunter’s going through next month. I’m to tell him to stop for you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d best get along. You won’t forget.” His fat bulk loomed over her.

  “No.”

  “He says he’ll have a place ready for you in the village there.”

  “Yes.”

  Hammil looked right and left. His mouth framed words. But he did not seem able to speak.

  “I’d better get to going,” he said at last. “Good-bye.”

  Mary watched him roll out of the door. He went elaborately on tiptoe past the cradle, turned the horse, and bellowed, “Get up, Bourbon.”

  The wheels rattled through the yard and down the road. The dust they raised came floating back. Mary sat still at the table. To have to move, when she felt just established! She saw that she could not make a home of the Melvilles’ house forever, but it pained her to leave them now. She had a thought of herself, packing up and moving all her life, following Jerry westward. Suddenly the corners of her mouth bent down in a little bitter smile. There was little enough to pack. She looked out through the door. Then she sprang to her feet. The baby had worked loose her blanket. She went out. One thing at least had been established in her life. As she bent over, she talked softly.

  Across the marsh, by Cossett’s, a shanty cook was beating his wagon-tire gong. The flatulent notes were harsh. Blackbirds swarmed aloft, alive with jibbered protest. Mary’s breasts grew heavy. She brought the baby in and made ready for its supper. Her head bent over its small face, her hair touching its cheek. The springs were rising in her, and a little haunting tune sang in her head:—

  “Awake, awake, you drowsy sleeper, Awake and listen unto me.”

  When the potato wagon trundled into the yard behind old Squirrel, she was calm again. She told Dorothy as they got supper. Dorothy’s long face reddened; her lips compressed. “It ain’t no time to move you. Hasn’t he any consideration?”

  “I couldn’t stay here with you forever, Dorothy.”

  “Ain’t we been good to you?”

  “Yes, Dorothy. I think my own mother couldn’t have tended me better.”

  Dorothy’s face softened. Tears came into her eyes.

  “But then— but, Mary, I’d like to keep you here till I died. And think of you staying on after.”

  Mary kissed her. Tall, and gaunt, and wordless, Dorothy hugged her close. Her eyes stared over Mary’s head. Her lips silently framed, “That Jerry!”

  Mary said quietly:

  “You’d follow after Robert, wouldn’t you, Dorothy?”

  “I suppose I would.” Dorothy tried to laugh.

  “Then you mustn’t blame Jerry.”

  But Mary felt that she must steel herself.

  Mary had a letter: the mail had left it in Orville and a man brought it up as a favor. It was marked important on the address side. The carrier was a young man.

  “Set down, mister. …”

  He flushed.

  “Elverta Judkins.”

  Looking at his stodgy face, the smallish eyes ill at ease, yet bound, as she supposed, to discover the contents of the important letter, Dorothy almost giggled. She avoided Mary’s eye as she invited him to sit down.

  “It was real kind in you, Mr. Judkins.”

  ” ‘Tweren’t neither,” said Elverta. “My uncle’s storekeeper.”

  “Oh yes— Mr. Diderick. Yes, surely.”

  “Well, he looked that letter over, and him and Pa considered it. And Pa said, seeing as how it was Sunday, and the Lord’s day, I might as well straddle the colt and come along.”

  Dorothy bubbled with fun.

  “Who do you expect it is, Mary?”— though they knew it must be from Hunter.

  Mary said, “It’s an expensive-appearing letter.”

  “One sheet,” said Judkins, peering over. “Uncle says it. Twenty-five cents postage wrote in the corner. That’s one sheet and seventy-five miles travel— less maybe, but not more. By postage law.”

  Mary ope
ned it deliberately. Then she passed it over to Dorothy.

  “Doesn’t seem as though I could make to read it. You do, Dorothy.”

  Dorothy mouthed the spelling.

  “Yes, it is from Roger Hunter— signs himself your servant, Mary. Says Caleb told him to pick you up for Montezuma. Good land!” Dorothy for-got her game. “Says he’s coming Wednesday— early. Getting here by sunrise—my, that’s seven o’clock.”

  Dorothy and Mary stared silently at each other. The tall woman’s face was tragically expressionless. “So soon,” she muttered. Neither of them thought of the boy until he asked, “That’s all there is in to it?”

  “Yes,” said Dorothy bitterly, “every bit.”

  “Well, then, I might as well be going home.”

  He sounded disappointed.

  “It was real kind of you to fetch it, Mr. Judkins,” Mary said.

  ” ‘Tweren’t neither.”

  “I take it kind,” she repeated fully.

  His hands kept twisting his limp hat.

  “No, ‘tweren’t,” he said again, stubbing his toe against a puncheon.

  Then he turned and ran out. They heard him vault onto the colt, heard his heels thwack the ribs, and the colt’s spirited scrabble in the yard and thudding hoofs along the road.

  Dorothy looked across.

  “Well, dearie.”

  Her voice was old and sad… .

  Long before the wagon came, they heard the Pennsylvania Bells. The haunting rhythm of the long-walking horse was in their notes that came like silver beads, evenly slid along a silver wire.

  The baby whimpered fretfully.

  “She’s not used,” said Dorothy, holding her. “So early.”

  “It’ll be something maybe for her to tell some day, that she rode in a Pennsylvany wagon,” Melville said, his long face honestly lugubrious.

  Mary looked anxiously over her bundles. One for herself. Inside were her clothes and the baby’s extra bedding and some gifts from the Melvilles —a lustre teapot for herself, and a little pewter cup for the baby when the time came for her to drink from it. Holding her now, Dorothy wondered if she would ever see her drink from it. Beside the big bundle was the baby’s own little one, wrapped in a piece of scarlet calico, the four ends knotted. And next to that was the cradle. Three things to remember.