Lamb in His Bosom

by Caroline Miller

  She found Lias there.

  He was talking pleasantly enough with Cean and Lonzo on the front steps. When Margot came through the house, he called out:

  “Howdy, old lady. ‘Bout through yore visitin’ with Cean?”

  She did not know how to answer him. When he saw that she would not answer him, his face sobered, and his words were sober, too:

  “If y’are, I’ve come t’ take ye home….”

  She went and got her hair-comb and the shimmy in which she had slept, and followed him out to the cart, while Cean and Lonzo made talk to cover Lias’s and Margot’s silence.

  Margot went back into the house and called Cean. Cean went in, and Margot took the opal ring out of the leathern bag which hung about her neck and slipped the ring into Cean’s hand.

  Margot and Lias were halfway home in the dark before he turned toward her and spoke:

  “Don’t you never dare walk off from me ag’in!”

  She pressed her hands together in her lap and said nothing.

  “Do ye hear me?”

  Without having thought out her words, she answered him:

  “Then don’t go kissin’ every little fool ye see….”

  She heard him take a long, deep breath. He thought—Now how did she know about that?—He said:

  “I’ll kiss who I please…‘n’ you kin do the same….”

  His words startled her. She thought—Oh, Lias, whom should I kiss but you?

  “Jasper told me where you had run off to.…Hit must be comfortin’ t’ have somebody close by t’ complain to….!”

  Margot’s hands loosed one another in her lap.—You Lias! Ole Green-eye’s got hold o’ ye!—

  The ox jogged slowly on in the night.

  She laid her hand on Lias’s shoulder.

  “I don’t complain to Jasper”…she reached her hands to his shoulders and turned him toward her “…and you know it….”

  The rough cowhide of the lines slipped through his hands, and his hands went about her shoulders as though seeking for her he had found her. She turned about and laid her head upon his hard knees, and wooed his mouth and his head down to hers with the weight of her hands on his cheeks and the weight of her head on his knees.

  And the night was the same night that comes down upon the Coast country where the sea washes in up the river, and then runs out again, and mosses swing from the trees like specters swathed in rough cerements.

  But now it was late, and Ma would be up and worrying about them out like this away in the night. And for the listening you could hear wildcats and painters meowling and complaining of hunger yonder in the swamp.

  Secretly Margot had felt a little guilty when she gave Cean the gold finger ring with the opal setting, for an opal is a curse. Would the finger ring bring Cean bad luck? But no! Cean had a good husband; and no luck can matter to a woman with a good husband; and no luck could change Lonzo!

  Cean would never wear the blind-eye ring, because it was too precious and because she could not love the dull, blind shine of it. When Margot and Lias were gone, she laid the ring inside the small chest of cherrywood that was set deep in her big chest; she placed the finger ring with her few gold pieces and her spoons of silver and the first worn brogans that had belonged to Magnolia.

  Now in the late fall the sheeps’ wool was matted with dried cuckleburs and sandspurs and seeds of beggar-weeds. Broom straw was tall and thick and bright yellow, ready for gathering and tying into house brooms. Goldenrod had bloomed itself out, except for a late clump here and yonder that sprayed up out of its stalk like a peacock’s proud fan. Sometime Margot would manage to get a pair of peafowls for Cean. The way her eyes had glittered when Margot told of how a flock of them would strut about on some rich Coast planter’s place!

  Lias liked the goldenrod; it was a pretty sight to see, come to think of it. He spaded up a flower-bed under Margot’s sleeping-room window, and set out clumps of the bunched wild goldenrods to grow there near the house; they’d wither and die now, but the roots would live and next fall there would be flower blooms for anybody to see for the opening of the shutter. Lias thought that new gold, untouched in some deep gut of old earth, could be no brighter or prettier to see than those curving rods of living gold.

  Lias thought that now he loved Margot more than ever he had loved her before. She was changed, somehow, in what way he could not say or know, since that time when she left him for two days. Somehow or other, Margot knew that he had kissed Bliss. Jasper had seen and told her, no doubt. A fine blood brother Jasper was, working his mouth to make trouble between man and wife! But why had he kissed Bliss that time? Why, she was only a child to him, a little brown child that smiled shyly at him across fence rails, or came across the cow-pen with a fine story of a new calf. Why had he ever fooled up with her? Her child-eyes worshiped him, but Margot’s woman-eyes worshiped him, too. Why had he kissed her that time? Furtively he remembered for a guilty moment the touch of her cheek against his cheek, the shy clinging of her mouth, the supple sheath of her hair pressed upon his brow. The feel of her near him was a new thing; he had not known that this new thing could be between a man and a woman; it was something, if he had known how to say it, that was without substance, yet real as the sky’s coloring, lightsome as the wanton burst of down from a thistle’s bloom which may be shattered by the lightest touch of a pleasuring wind. For hers was the kiss of a child who is almost a woman.

  When Lias brought Margot back home, Jasper was glad that the difference was healed; but his in’ards felt as though a hot smoothing-iron was going back and forth over them. And Seen, to comfort Margot, said that such things come about in the life of many a man, and ever it hurts his mother more than it hurts his wife. Margot could not believe that saying, for she could not believe that any other body could hurt as she had hurt when she had slipped away to walk that trail that led to Cean’s house, while her feet, heavy as lead weights, rebelled against going since every step was a little way farther from Lias. Jake saw no reason for so much to-do! Men and women were the master-fools; ever he was grown, never would he marry! Vince said less than ever these days; the older he growed, the less he knowed, he said; but one thing sure, a wife has no business a-strammin’ around over the country, nor a husband to let her do it….

  Cean, back home on a low slope bounded by swaying stretches of broom straw and tilled fields, sheltered by lofty pines and the blazing-bright dome of heaven, prayed Godalmighty that she would never have just cause to leave Lonzo; but over and above any other thing, each day raising her heart to an altar, she prayed for patience—patience to listen to a child’s fretting; patience to endure a man’s hard displeasure over bad weather or the death of a hog; patience to love God as she ought, this being hard to do since never might she see His face until she died.

  Chapter 10

  Lias never meant to get into any trouble over that little Bliss Corwin. Margot was more to blame for it than he was, he thought; she set Bliss in his way where he would have to see her and speak to her and remember her afterward.

  Lias believed that he would have forgotten Bliss—and glad to do it—if Margot hadn’t kept on reminding him of her. Sometimes when he would lay his arms around Margot in the dark of night, she would press her cheek against his neck and whisper, “Am I as sweet as Bliss?” He could not carve out pretty legs for a fire stool without Margot’s spoiling his pride in it by saying, though she said it with a laugh, “Is that for me or Bliss?” Lias knew no way to answer her; if he were angered at her childishness, she would fret herself because she thought that he was angry because she had spoken of Bliss; and if he laughed at her, then she would be sure that he took but lightly such a grave matter as Bliss Corwin. If she had quarreled, then he would have known how to answer her; but she would never quarrel. Sometimes when he would be deep in thought over some affair of his own, she would come softly behind him where he sat, soberfaced, and say, “A penny for yere thoughts!” And he would know that she believed that he was studying
about Bliss.

  Lias believed that he would cheerfully have forgotten Bliss, but Margot made him remember.

  This was the third year of his marriage to Margot. There was a cool, wet spring, and a blowsy, slow, over-ripe summer; then before you could turn around, fall came blowing in, and Margot went about the yard budding her winter pinks under the window shutter of her room. Bright leaves went flying down every high lane of wind; pine-needles dropped soundlessly as sand brushed from the fingers; high wind blew black smoke flat on the tops of the chimneys. Soon winter would come in. During all this time Lias had seen Bliss not more than twice, and those times in a crowd; he had kissed her not once more, nor wanted to; he thought of her as a pretty child whom an up-and-coming son of a neighbor roundabout would snatch up and marry one day soon.

  Margot gave an all-day quilting in October, during the bright Indian summer weather that followed the first cold snap. Nothing would do Margot but that Bliss should come. She made Lias drive her over to Lige Corwin’s; she was careful to invite Susanna, his wife, and Marthy, his fat daughter-in-law-and Bliss, when anybody would know that Bliss wasn’t old enough to go to a grown-woman’s quilting. But Bliss came as big as you please, diked out in a sky-blue dress not more’n a week out of the loom, with her head in a pink hood trimmed with black worsted blossoms.

  The menfolks did not come about such women’s doings; they kept out of the way. Though Vince was now so poorly, he rode off to see Lige Corwin; Jake went off fishing; Jasper and Lias puttered around the lot over an axletree, or ground the plowshares, or did any old thing to keep their hands busy away from the house.

  In the house Margot stirred about the cook-pots filled with the big dinner; Bliss helped her. The room-wide quilting-frames were set up on chair backs, and the women stood around the sides of them, sewing busily; the air was full of women’s talk and laughter with no meaning behind it. The women’s hands guided the needles carefully in minute stitches through the top and cotton and lining, following a pattern laid out in their minds. Cean was here, with her babies tugging at her knees and crying so that she could not keep up with her quilting. Lonzo’s sisters were here, and women from all roundabout. They could easily put in and take out four quilts before the sun was near down. All hands were busy, and the house was ahum with pleasance.

  In the middle of the morning Margot was quilting, too, but all of a sudden she stopped her needle, laid her thimble beside it, licked her lips carefully as though she had something hard to say. She went to the fireplace where Bliss sat quietly as became a younger woman; she stooped and said to Bliss:

  “Would ye mind going to look for Lias for me? Tell him I want him.”

  Bliss’s eyes widened a little as she looked up at Margot. “No’m. I’d be glad to.”

  But she was not glad, for Mister Lias frightened her. She went out the back door in search of him, and Margot turned back to her quilting and her eyes were shining. Margot talked brightly now; she even started Liza Jones off on an account of her grippe of last winter.

  Bliss could not find Mister Lias. Jasper was filing a hoeblade and looked at Bliss as though he had never seen her before. Bliss went up to Jasper, taking upon herself a fine grown-up air.

  “Could ye tell me where I’d be likely t’ find Mister Lias? His wife wants him….”

  Jasper scowled.

  “No’m, I couldn’t say….”

  He turned his back and set out for the cornfield.

  She saw Mister Lias a moment later; he was in the cribloft door, high above her; and he was laughing at her like she had been a fool!

  “And what did ye want o’ me?”

  She dropped her eyes; she did not like to be laughed at. “Ye’re wife wants ye….”

  “Then why didn’t she come fer me?”

  He lay on his belly on the hay above her, clasping his cheeks in his hands.

  She fingered her wristband that her mother had made a smidgeon too tight.

  “She sent me fer ye….”

  “Margot never sent you fer me!”

  Her face reddened, but she did not know how to answer Mister Lias; his wife had sent her!

  He took down his hands from his cheeks, and his long, brown fingers drooped over the hay-strewn threshold of the loft door.

  “Well, if she sent ye s’ big, why don’t ye come on up and git me?”

  “Ye can come down by ye own self, I guess.”

  She turned to go back to the house, but she did not much want to go, and when he called her she turned back toward him. Reaching his long arms, he swung himself down from the loft door and dropped to the ground.

  Up at the house there was nobody in sight; an old hen with a poor hatch of fall biddies scratched by the back door; around the place there was no sound but the cheerful potracking of guineas in the trees around the spring and women’s lifted laughter from the house.

  He thought, “Ye’re smarter than ye look, little sinner with the face of an angel!” Then his face hardened and there were two thin, white lines reaching from his flaring nostrils to his twitching lips.

  “Go on back to the house!”

  “Miss Margot wants ye….”

  “You tell her I cain’t come now!” He stood straight with his arms folded hard on his breast: “You go on back to the house… and come back some other time….”

  She never knew that he never believed that Margot had sent her.

  She went up to the house and told Margot what Mister Lias had said. Margot laughed a little.

  “Well, I guess I can draw what water we need….”

  But Bliss went to draw the water while Margot went on with her quilting and ran the needle under her thumb nail because she was thinking: “I’ll make him see that I’m no jealous fool…if it kills me….”

  In November, Margot persuaded them to give a cornshucking for Jake’s age of young folks. Bliss was there again. Margot paired off Bliss and Jake, and as luck would have it, Jake found a red ear and so had a right to kiss Bliss if he wanted to; but he would not kiss her, though the gathering laughed and tormented him; all he would say was, “Nope, I don’t kiss, thank ye!”

  Margot had more to say than anybody, until Jake was purple in the face with shame. She kept on saying: “Pore little Bliss! Won’t nobody kiss her for Jake?” Lias stepped out finally, but Jasper was but one step behind him, and spoke first:

  “I’ll kiss her…and learn Jake how!”

  And Jasper kissed Bliss with a loud smack of his lips; his face and neck were as red as a beet and blood crowded in his head like a fever.

  After that you would have thought that Jasper had taken a liking to Bliss. He saw her home that night, and twice in one week he went to her Pa’s place on no more excuse than a sick hog, or less. Lige and Susanna Corwin egged it on and were over-nice to Jasper, and sent Seen a keg of lard and more smoked sausage than they all could eat. Jasper was a good catch, not so handsome as Lias, but steadier; not to say that he wasn’t handsome at that, with his dark hair falling over his dark brow, and his black eyes bright as black water, and his broad shoulders strong as a young battering-ram. Jasper thought that he would up and ask Bliss to marry him as soon as he could find out how well he liked her.

  But a little thing held him back: if they were talking of banking sweet potatoes, she would say some little thing to stop his thoughts, such as, “Do yere folks like sweet ‘taters? Seems like I remember Mister Lias sayin’ he wasn’t overfond of ‘em”; or maybe they would be talking of hogs, when she would say, “Mister Lias is the proud of his big sow, hain’t he?”

  So Jasper’s hot notion of marrying Bliss cooled in his head, little by little; he found no more excuses to ride over to Lige Corwin’s.

  In March, Lias carted his big hog to Lige Corwin’s.

  Any way you looked, the grass under the pines was purplish with wood-violets. Lias got down out of the cart to look at the things; he pulled a few, and some of them had stems as long as his hand; they were a washed-out blue color, pale as a sky or a
n ocean, with leaves as big as puppy ears, and shaped like hearts; they had the look of blind, blue faces. He cast the handful of them away and went on to Bliss’s.

  Bliss brought fresh buttermilk for Lias to drink, and sweetbread still warm from the fire. Lias, with his mouth full of sweetbread, talked to Lige:

  “Y’ought t’ see the creek slope betwixt here and home blue as indigo with violets…a sight to behold....”

  Before Lias was well out of sight, Bliss set out to see those flower blossoms.

  And yonder on the creek slope was Lias’s ox-cart. He was grabbling out rooted violets to carry home for the bed under his sleeping-room window. Bliss decided she would take some home, too. So Lias dug up some for her, too, till his hands were grimy. Then the two of them went to wash their hands where the creek flowed across the trail. And for fun they took off their shoes and stockings and waded, though the water was still ice cold from winter.

  She was not afraid of Mister Lias any more, for he told her to call him just plain Lias, and he seemed no older than herself, for all his beard and deep voice.

  The creek was up; the water lapped the under sides of the logs that were set up to carry the trail across; Bliss climbed out of the water to the foot-log; she stood there above Lias with her feet showing red from the cold. She shivered and said that she must put on her shoes and go home. But just then a scorpion ran his pink glossy head over the side of the log not two foot away, and she was afraid to go by that way. So Lias lifted her down and carried her out of the creek, with his breeches rolled to his knees, and Bliss’s bright-green skirts and blowsy hair and laughing mouth filling his arms.

  He set her down on the ground and put her stockings on her feet; her skin was soft as lambskin to his rough hands; he tied the latchets of her little shoes for her.

  They were sitting on violets as though they were common dirt.

  He plucked a loose handful of the tender blooms of grimy, wild roots. They had but little sweetness to them, so he crushed them in his hands to make them smell the sweeter. He laid them on Bliss’s rumpled hair, and laid his hand, sweet with violet-smell, on her laughing throat. He kissed her, then kissed her again quickly.