Cean did not thank Lias to come here bringing a plumb tree for a peace offering, making more trouble than they all could ever patch up.
For in this time Margot was eight month gone with Jasper’s child.
When he read the letter, Jasper turned white and said nothing. But Margot went into a hard spasm of weeping, and neither Jasper nor Cean could say anything to quiet her. When she got hold of herself, Margot turned it off, saying:
“Ye’ll have to overlook my taking on so. I’m toucheous and heavyhearted….”
So Lias was not dead; and Margot had lived in adultery with Jasper and was bearing a child outside of marriage.…Till death us do part…! No opinion of any man, no word of any elder, can set aside those words between a man and a woman.
Margot went off to the spring-house to set away the butter and to be alone…–I am Lias’s wife—she thought—and when the elder married me to Jasper the words were air…and no more.…From this hour on I must live apart from Jasper. In another month I must birth his child, but he must not help me do it. For I am but his sister. Jasper helped me when Lias’s child was born; if he is here in that time, Lias will help me when Jasper’s child is born. Or will Lias kill Jasper? Godalmighty! why can we not see a little time ahead and so step aside from a mess that lies ahead of us! or do we walk straight into a mess, shut-eyed, and biggity-hearted!
She stood watching the spring water boil up out of its dark hole; it circled up as water in a pot circles before it boils, but it was icy cold. Men told that once an Indian woman had fallen into this spring and quick as thought she was sucked out of sight. You could not find the bottom of this spring, even with a long stick.
—If I stepped in, I wonder if that would be the last of me.… But it would be a horror to be swallowed down into this loose gullet of the earth, to be churned around for no telling how long, to be spewed out yonder God knows where on a bleaking mountain hot with volcano flame—
She knelt beside the spring, and leaned her weight on the palms of her hands, and studied the dark depth of the spring. The welling of the water troubled the likeness of her face as she stooped and looked into it; the spring was black and gluttonous, an insatiate mouth. Oh, the earth has mouths; the swamps are full of them, slobbering and sucking and trembling for greediness!
She thought—Lias is alive and well.…I should wish to take up where I left off.…Take up and leave off and take up again… like an old shoe. Hard new boots are a trial to the feet.…Lias, I have shed enough tears for you to fill this spring. If you have ever shed one for me, I do not know of it—
She pulled up to her feet again, and nigh pitched into the spring, for the weight of Jasper’s heavy child. She would ask Jasper if this spring would truly swallow a body if one were offered it.
Cean bore the letter back to her house and laid it away in her chest of precious things. This letter was nighabout as precious a thing as a gold piece, for all his life Lonzo had coveted a letter in his own name.
On the children’s birthdays, Cean took the letter from the chest and read it to them; but never to them did she read the line of the message to Margot. It had been set at the bottom of the sheet, and Margot had torn it away to keep for herself, and the written likeness of Lias’s name set down by his hand.
The twins dug out a big hole on the slope and hauled manure and dumped it in the hole, ready for the Californy plum tree. Each of Cean’s little girls coveted for herself little dead Fairby’s silk dress and needle-book that her pa was bringing home to her. All the children worked hard and were extry good in hopes that Lias would bring them jew’s-harps or Barlow knives or any old thing, so long as it was from Californy.
When Cean was gone back home, Jasper took down his old rifle from the buck-antlers over the fireplace; he wiped it out carefully, rubbed the pan with a woolen cloth, drew a piece of tow through the touchhole, poured in powder, sprung open the grease-box in the breech, put a little grease on a little piece of patching, laid it on the muzzle with the greasy side down, set the bullet on the patching, pressed the bullet down with his forefinger, carefully cut away the extry patching, primed carefully, and laid the charged rifle back on its buck-horn rack over the mantel-shelf.
Lias was slow in coming, for some reason. He should be here in this time. But he did not come.
A month later Margot bore a son; and Jasper, brash and reckless in the face of Lias’s arrogance, gave his son his own name and the maiden name of Margot’s mother—Jasper O’Sullivan. Though Margot was not his wife, and before God had never been, Jasper could hardly do his work for hurrying back to the house to see if Margot needed anything. He could sit by the hour, holding his child. A frown on the child’s brow tormented Jasper; he did not want his child to be sad-hearted and heavy-mouthed like its father; he wanted this son to be like its mother.
Jasper bore the trouble in which he found himself as lightly as might be, for he took full blame upon himself for it. Always he had known that he had no right to marry Margot.
Now she quarreled at him for any little thing; she sharpened her tongue upon him as any wife might do; she said no strong, hard thing, but was apt to find fault with anything he did, and taunted him with being slow and shut-mouthed. To answer her, Jasper only sighed and heaved his shoulders a little. He was willing for Margot to quarrel at him; she had enough on her mind to drive her crazy as a nit. If he and Lias had left her be, she might have been happy. As for himself, he was being punished and he would see to it that Lias was punished, ever he came home.
Each day they thought: This day Lias will come; but day after day went by and he did not come. They tired of looking forever down the trail toward the east; they tired of keeping themselves cocked and primed to meet Lias. They did not know that Lias could not come now, howsomever he might wish to. And for Margot’s quarreling at Jasper, and for his humble care of her and the child, they were as well as married.
Chapter 20
Lonzo’s death was no great matter to the crops that were planted in his ground; pea-fields blossomed and bore as heavy a hay-crop as ever; as in any past happy year in Cean’s life, corn stretched its brazen-green stalks upward to golden flower-heads.
Cean seeded her land and brought it to bearing and stripped it of its harvest nighonto as well as Lonzo had done these things. Her mouth lost some of its gentleness and became hard and tight; the children would whine back at her if she were not firm with them as she set them to hoeing out the weeds in the fence corners or to setting cabbage plants or potato draws; they would lag along behind her now that Lonzo was not here to threaten them, until Cean learned to threaten, too—and to carry out her threats when they were not heeded. She trounced the children sometimes until she would be ashamed of herself; when she scolded one that would not hush his whining, and raised her hand to strike, and saw him dodge as a hound dodges a stick, she would be heavy-hearted because she must use hard measures with her children. Oh, how they needed Lonzo over them to draw obedience by the simple, gruff calling of a name! Cean sometimes exhausted herself in switching the twins, and when it was over, went up in the loft and cried about it. She did not know what she was to do as her children grew older; what if they should turn on her and jaw back at her? She did not know what she would do when she was too old to whip one till he gave in to her.
She was too worried up over many things to grieve over-much after Lonzo. She had cried for the little twins that she lost, she had cried for Caty who swallowed fire, but she had cried no great deal for Lonzo. She had too much work to do to sit and cry after him; there were too many noisy mouths to call after her and quarrel among themselves. But, oh, sometimes in the night when the house was still but for the clock’s ticking and the soft snoring of her children, she stretched her hand to the left of her where he had always slept, and her whole time of life seemed as empty as that little stretch of feather bed that he would never warm again. Never had he been much for kissing and fondling, but well Cean knew that he had loved her as a good man loves his wife—wit
hout any great change or much talk of it till one of them is put underground. For a time after Lonzo died Cean wished that she had been the one to go; but now she could see the wisdom of His ways. What in creation would Lonzo have done, left alone with this passel of younguns? He would have got him a new wife before a new year. Cean would not like a young and foolish stepmother over her children; no, she could see that things were better as they stood.
The country about was opening up and filling in. To the west, families had settled, and Cean felt safer. It was a fur piece yonder to the Mississippi where the county line used to run; for in the old days, Georgy stretched from Savanna to the Alatamaha and westward to the South Seas; and there was nothing between here and there but walls of black pine forest sifting down dead needles in the wind, and wide rivers, and fever swamps, and wild Injuns roaming about like pigs in a chufa-patch. The Georgy Indians were kind Indians, folks would tell you, but Cean wouldn’t put no trust in a man that lived wild in the woods like a black bear.
On a bright morning in the early fall of ’fifty-eight Cean and all her children drove to Margot’s, where Maggie was to be married to Will Sandifer when Margot and Cean had all the preparations made. The new preacher, Dermid O’Connor, was staying at Jasper’s house. And, anyhow, somehow Cean wanted Maggie and Will to stand where Seen Carver had set Cean’s and Lonzo’s feet when they stood up to be married.
Maggie’s was a finer wedding than Cean’s had been. Margot and Cean cooked up pies and sugar-cakes for days ahead, and scrubbed the walls and floors of Seen Carver’s old house until everything smelled of pot-ashes. In the middle of the front-room floor, clean now as an eating-table, Cean marked with a dead fire-coal the place where Lonzo’s feet had stood, and another mark to the left of it where she had stood. She stayed on her knees a minute, recollecting; yonder was Ma’s place behind Pa’s shoulder; and beside them had stood Lias and Jasper and little Jake—who had cried when Cean married—who was now thirty-and-three year old and was breaking land to the north across the river from Pa’s place and a-courtin’ little Kish Acree. After the last longest, it looked as though Jake might grow up, after all, and be a man. Kish was a little thing, not half as old as Jake—fifteen come June. She had slapped Jake’s jaws one night before a crowd of them all when he had teased her past endurance about having such big feet; then they all knew that he would marry her, for her feet were not much bigger than a child’s, and Jake could see it for himself. Kish had cried when Jake teased her so, and slapped his jaws for him. When Jake saw her tears he went and sat quietly behind her through all the loud talk and merrymaking, trying to make her laugh by put-on crying over his jaw that he claimed she had broke with her fist! They two would not frolic nor join in the singing nor pull candy; they sat in the corner away from the others. Cean watched them with sheep’s-eye glances. Until yet she loved her little brother fit to kill. Kish sat with her childish, puckered chin tucked down into her shoulder, with her blue eyes cast down to her stiffly-starched bosom, with her fingers working at the little hand kerchief that lay in her lap. Jake’s eyes were cast down, too, for he was ashamed that he had teased her until she cried; he could not think what to say to her to make amends. But when the new preacher, Dermid O’Connor, brought out his banjo from the shed-room that used to be Ma’s, and plunked the heavy wires a time or two, and raised his voice in that sweetest song that Cean had ever heard in all her born life—“Ever of thee I’m fondly dreaming”—Kish’s little brown hand went to hide under the full, winecolored skirt of her dress that was spread out on the wall bench, and Jake’s hand went and found it. Jake and Kish sat so through all the sweet length of that song. Cean had to turn her face away to keep from crying. It was all the same as it had been more than twenty years gone, only it was Jake and Kish now, and not Lonzo and Cean. Before she could turn around there would be another wedding.…She thought: Time does not pass in a clock’s ticking; oh no! It goes like gusts of wind past the north corner of a house. Stay in the sun on the south side and you never know a wind is blowing, but breast around the north corner, and it will jerk your breath from out of your ribs. It is blowing, but you don’t notice it; always time is passing, but you don’t notice it, until that baby-chile, Mary Magnolia, is ready to stand up and take a husband and go yonder to Dicie Smith’s house to live.
Cean went about helping Margot with preparations for the bridal feast. Margot was planning such a time as people have at Coast weddings; she had enough victuals to feed an army—meats, preserves, pickles, pies, cakes. And in the loft stood crock after crock of brier berry wine. Cean doubted that Pa would like liquor in his house, but folks must change when times change, and mayhap brier berry wine is no crime. Anyhow, Cean would make no objections to any of Margot’s plans; for Margot had worried so long over Lias’s coming that Cean was glad for her to have some big thing to take her mind off herself.
When the Irishman stood Maggie and Will up to marry them, Cean’s eyes went to Maggie’s face and stayed there. Maggie stood shyly beside Will Sandifer’s straight, lean figure; her eyes were bright and soft and trustin’ as a young squirrel’s. “Do me no hurt,” a little squirrel says to ye, as plain as eyes can speak, “for God knows I mean no harm to ye!” Cean could not bear to see the look in Maggie’s eyes; she moved in behind Jasper’s shoulders, so that if a foolish wet came to her eyes Maggie would not see it.
There was merrymaking all night long in the old house when Maggie was married. Even Dermid O’Connor, the New Light preacher, drank goblets full of sweet brier berry wine, one after another, in the course of the celebration. When the fun was loud and plain-spoken—and truth to tell, Cean was growing a little squeamish—the preacher came over to where she was sitting and asked her how the Widow Smith was feeling; and she answered, “With my fingers, the same as always!” And the two of them laughed at the joke, sorry as it was. He said, “And how does it seem to have a grown gal married?” She could think of no smart answer to that and answered, simply, “I reckon I feel no different from before.” Still he would not hush his talking. He went on, “A body would never think but that ye was sister to Miss Maggie, t’ look at ye!” Cean blushed at that; her heart thudded like a girl’s, though well she knew that Margot’s brier berry liquor was making him lie like a sinner, and making her have no more sense than to listen to him. Not in years had a body paid her so much mind.
When no one was looking, she went into Margot’s room and looked at herself carefully in the looking-glass set in a brass frame on the wall. (Jasper had brought Margot that present from the Coast like as though she was his wife.)
Sure enough, Cean saw that her eyes were bright as shoebuttons from the Coast, though she knew that was because she was excited over Maggie’s wedding—and full of brier berry liquor. Alone with herself in Margot’s room, she wet her lips with her tongue and smoothed her cheeks with her hands. No, she was not ugly; wrinkles lay deep across her forehead and around her eyes; her face was fagged and worn; but she could still be a handsome woman if she would poultice her hide in meal and buttermilk, as some women do, and wash her eyes in brine night and morning, and grease her hair with goose grease to make it sleek and shiny.
When she went out to the big room again where Margot was ladling out sweet brier berry liquor, Cean took another goblet that was pushed upon her, and drank the goblet empty. She sat in a chair along the wall, and laughed to see the young folks having such a fine time. The back of her neck tingled as though a poultice were laid there; she felt warm and content; she thought it was a happy thing when midnight came and Maggie and Will went off to the bridal chamber that Jasper had given up for tonight so that Cean and Margot could dike it out to be Maggie’s room. For very brash deviltry, Cean drank a new goblet of wine every time one was offered to her, until her head was nigh onto falling about on her shoulders. She thought—and could not get away from the thought—That was Ma’s best room, and Pa carved her a cherry-wood bedstead for it. Nighabout two years ago it was Jasper’s and Margot’s. And, la me! Twe
nty-and-two year gone Lias led Margot in there to sleep…and that was when I was new-wed to Lonzo… afore Mary Magnolia was a baby.
Cean was like to cry for sadness; she thought—Still, I am not sad; it’s but them brier berries that Margot made into wine.
She sat along the wall, watching the frolicking and fun-making on this side of that shut door yonder, and she was dreamily content. Nothing disturbed her, not even the thought of the least baby, Zilfey; if it waked and cried, Wealthy would turn it over and hush it.
Earlier in the night she had looked toward the loft hole, and had seen Wealthy with heavy-eyed Zilfey in her arms, and Lonzo’s Vincent holding Margot’s baby, Sully; Jamie and Johnnie and Aryadne and Bethany were ranged on the floor at the edge of the loft hole, peering down into the room like shy little animals watching how foolishly men may disport themselves. Here in the room were Margot’s son by Lias, the gangling-legged Vincent—more like his father now at sixteen years than he was the day he was born, and he was much like him then; Lias’s frown was stamped between his brows, Lias’s quick step and high-tossing head haunted the body of this youth as though it were possessed of a spirit. Down here capering with other young ones were Cean’s other children. Kissie laughed too much and turned her head if Seeb Ingle but spoke a word to anybody at all; Cal was nearly a man with the best of them, seventeen, and beginning to try out the young girls with a joke in his mouth; Lovedy was the age of Margot’s Vincent, lacking one day, and the prettiest child Cean had at all.
Cean leaned her head against the log that she had washed down with strong soap suds the day before yesterday. She was satisfied; it was worth any pain to see Maggie happy; it was worth all the labor of her and Lonzo’s hands to see their children step off in turn, well provided for. A pity Lonzo was not here to see Maggie’s wedding….
Words of the new preacher fell dully on her ears. He had come to sit beside her. She could scarce hear him for the warm, singing sounds that were all about her, obscuring the meaning of his words; her blood worked in her body, like sweet brier berry juice that turns to wine. Margot had showed her how to give away a daughter—not with tears and fears and solemn good-bys, but with jokes and laughter and wine to kill the uneasiness that must rise at the marriage of a woman’s child. She would give away the others in a proper manner; she would set wider reaches of cotton; she would raise more goods to trade off for linnen shifts for her girls to be brides in.
Lamb in His Bosom Page 28
