XI
On an afternoon in October, Dorinda stood under the harp-shaped pine in the graveyard and looked down on the farm.
The drift of autumn was in the air; the shadows from the west were growing longer; and in a little while Nimrod, the farm boy, would let down the bars by the watering-trough, and the seven Jersey cows would file sleepily across the road and the lawn to the cow-barn. At the first glimpse of Nimrod she would run down and slip into her overalls. Ever since the cows had come from Green Acres, she had milked them morning and evening, and she was wondering now how many more she could handle with only Fluvanna to help her. Only by doing the work herself and keeping a relentless eye on every detail, could she hope to succeed in the end. If she were once weak enough to compromise with the natural carelessness of the negroes, she knew that the pails and pans would not be properly scalded, and the milk would begin to lose its quality. Fluvanna was the superior of most ignorant white women; but even Fluvanna, though she was, as Dorinda said to herself, one in a thousand, would slight her work as soon as she was given authority over others. There were times when it seemed to Dorinda that this instinct to slight was indigenous to the soil of the South. In the last six months she had felt the temptation herself. There had been hours of weariness when it had seemed to her that it was better to be swift and casual than to be slow and thorough; but she had always suppressed the impulse before it was translated into outward negligence. Would her power of resistance survive, she wondered, or would it yield inevitably to the surrounding drought of energy?
Six months were gone now, and how hard she had worked! She thought of the mornings when she had risen before day, eaten a hurried breakfast by the crack of dawn, and milked the cows by the summer sunrise. From the moment the warm milk frothed into the pails until the creamy butter was patted into moulds and stamped with the name Old Farm beneath the device of a harp-shaped pine, there was not a minute detail of the work that was left to others. Even the scalding of the churns, the straining and skimming of the milk in the old-fashioned way without a separator,—all these simple tasks came under her watchful eyes. When the first supply of butter was sent off, she waited with nervous dread for the verdict. The price had seemed extravagant, for selling directly to her customer she had asked thirty cents a pound, while butter in Pedlar’s store was never higher than ninepence in summer and a shilling in winter, measured in the old English terms which were still commonly used in Queen Elizabeth County.
“It seems a mighty high price,” her mother had objected.
“I know, but Mrs. Faraday told me to ask more. She said the dairy would get a dollar a pound for the very best. Some people are always ready to pay a high price, and they value a thing more if they pay too much for it. I found out all I could about butter making in New York, and I’m sure nobody could have taken more trouble. It tasted like flowers.”
“Well, perhaps—” Mrs. Oakley had sounded dubious. “We’ll wait and see.”
When the letter and check came together, Dorinda’s spirits had soared on wings. The hotel and the dairy would take all that she could supply of that quality; and though she had known that her success was less fortuitous than appeared on the surface, she had not paused to inquire whether it was owing to influence or to accident. “If everything goes well, I’ll have twenty-five cows by next fall,” she said hopefully, “and Ebenezer and Mary Joe Green to help Fluvanna.”
“You always jump so far ahead, Dorinda.”
“I’m made that way. I can’t help it. If I didn’t live in the future, I couldn’t stand things as they are.”
Now, in the soft afternoon light, she stretched her arms over her head with a gesture of healthy fatigue. The aromatic scent of the pine was in her nostrils. In the sun-steeped meadows below there was the murmurous chanting of grasshoppers. At the hour she felt peaceful and pleasantly drowsy, and all her troubles were lost in the sensation of physical ease. She was thinner than ever; her muscles were hard and elastic; the colour of her skin was burned to a pale amber; and the curves of her rich mouth were firmer and less appealingly feminine. In a few years the work of the farm would probably coarsen her features; but at twenty-three she was still young enough to ripen to a maturer beauty. Though her hands were roughened by work and the nails were stained and broken, she wasted no regret upon the disfigurement of her body as long as her senses remained benumbed by toil. She slept now without dreaming. This alone seemed to her to be worth any sacrifice of external softness.
Her glance travelled over the cornfield, where the shocks were gathered in rows amid the stubble, and she reflected that the harvest had been better than usual. Then her eyes passed along the orchard path to the new cow-barn, and she watched the figure of William Fairlamb climbing down from the roof. An agreeable sense of possession stole into her mind, while she looked from the cow-barn to the back of the house, and saw her mother moving along the path from the porch. There were a hundred and fifty hens in the poultry yard now, and it seemed to Dorinda that the old woman’s happiness had simmered down into an enjoyment of chickens. Though she still worshipped Rufus, he was only a disappointment and an increasing anxiety. Of late he had done no work on the farm; his days were spent in hunting with Ike Pryde or Adam Snead, and it was evident to Dorinda that he was beginning to drink too much bad whiskey. It would be a relief, she felt, when November came and he went away for the winter.
Turning her head, as she prepared to leave the graveyard, she glanced beyond the many-coloured autumn scene to the distant chimneys of Five Oaks. How far-off was the time when the sight of those red chimneys against a blue or grey sky would not stab into her heart? Her love was dead; and her regret clung less to the thought that love had ended in disappointment than to the supreme tragedy that love ended at all. Nothing endured. Everything perished of its own inner decay. That, after all, was the gnawing worm at the heart of experience. If either her love or her hatred had lasted, she would have found less bitterness in the savour of life.
For the first few weeks after her meeting with Jason on the edge of the pines, she had been enveloped in profound peace. Then, gradually, it seemed to her that the farther she moved away from him in reality, the closer he approached to her hidden life. As the days went by, the freedom she had won in his presence wore off like the effects of an anodyne, and the bondage of the nerves and the senses began to tighten again. Never, since she had looked into his face and had told herself that she was indifferent, had she known complete disillusionment. The trouble was, she discovered, that instead of remembering him as she had last seen him, her imagination created images which her reason denied. Not only her pain, but the very memory of pain that had once been, could leave, she found, a physical soreness.
Beyond the fields and the road the sun was sinking lower, and the western sky was stained with the colour of autumn fruits. While she watched the clouds, Dorinda remembered the heart of a pomegranate that she had seen in a window in New York; and immediately she was swept by a longing for the sights and sounds of the city. “There’s no use thinking of that now,” she said to herself, as she left the brow of the hill and walked down the path through the orchard. “Like so many other things, it is only when you look back on it that you seem to want it. While I was in New York I was longing to be away. There comes Nimrod with the cows, and Fluvanna bringing the milk pails.”
On the back porch her mother was drying apples, for the apple crop had been good, and the cellar was already stored with russets and winesaps.
“We ought to have dried apples enough to last us till next year,” Mrs. Oakley remarked, while she wiped the discoloured blade of the knife on her apron. “The whole time I was slicing these apples, I couldn’t help thinking how partial your father was to dried fruit, and last fall there were hardly any apples fit to keep.” Raising her hand to her eyes, she squinted in the direction from which her daughter had come. “I can’t make out who that is running across the cornfield, but whoever it is, he’s in a mighty big hurry.”
Dorinda followed her gaze. “It’s Rufus. He looks as if something were after him.”
Mrs. Oakley’s face was twisted into what was called her “neuralgic look.” “He promised me to mend that churn before night,” she said in a dissatisfied tone. “But I haven’t laid eyes on him since dinner time. He goes too much in bad company. I haven’t got a particle of use for Ike Pryde and those two Kittery boys over by Plumtree.”
Dorinda nodded. “I’m glad he is going away. The sooner, the better.”
“I reckon he has just recollected the churn.” Mrs. Oakley’s tone was without conviction, and she added presently, “He certainly does look scared, doesn’t he?”
“I wonder what could have frightened him?” As the boy drew nearer, Dorinda saw that he was panting for breath and that his usually florid face was blanched to a leaden pallor. “What on earth has happened, Rufus?” she called sharply.
He waved angrily to her to be silent. His palmetto hat was in his hand, and when he reached the porch, he hurled it through the open door into the hall. Though his breath came in gasps as if he were stifling for air, he picked up a hammer from one of the benches, and without stopping to rest, bent over the broken churn at the side of the step.
“What on earth has happened, Rufus?” Dorinda asked again. She saw that her mother was trembling with apprehension, and the sight exasperated her against Rufus.
“You ought to have let me go away last spring,” the boy replied in a truculent tone. He lifted the hammer above his head and, still wheezing from his race, drove a nail crookedly into the bottom of the churn. His hand trembled, and Dorinda noticed that the swinging blow fell unevenly.
“You haven’t done anything you oughtn’t to, have you, son?” his mother inquired shrilly.
Rufus turned his head and stared at her in moody silence. Though his handsome face wore his usual sulky frown, Dorinda suspected that his resentful manner was a veil that covered an inner disturbance. His dark eyes held a smouldering fire, as if fear were waiting to leap out at a sound, and the hand in which he clutched the hammer had never stopped shaking.
“Don’t you let on I wasn’t here, no matter who asks you,” he said doggedly. “It wasn’t my fault anyway. There isn’t anybody coming, is there?”
“No, that’s Nimrod bringing up the cows,” Dorinda rejoined impatiently. “I must put on my overalls.”
Whatever happened, the cows must be milked, she reflected as she entered the house. This morning and evening ritual of the farm had become as inexorable as law. Hearts might be broken, men might live or die, but the cows must be milked.
When she came back from the dairy, Rufus had disappeared, but her mother, who was preparing supper, beckoned her into the kitchen. “I haven’t found out yet what’s the matter,” whispered the old woman. “He won’t open his mouth, though I can see that he’s terribly upset about something. I’m worried right sick.”
“He’s probably got into a quarrel with somebody. You know how overbearing he is.”
“I reckon I spoiled him.” Mrs. Oakley’s lip trembled while she poured a little coffee into a cup and then poured it back again into the coffee-pot. “Your father used to tell me I made a difference because he was the youngest. I s’pose I oughtn’t to have done it, but it’s hard to see how I could have helped it. He was a mighty taking child, was Rufus.”
“Where is he now?”
“Up in his room. I’ve called him to supper. He’s loaded his gun again, but he didn’t seem to want me to notice, and he’s put it back in the corner behind the door.”
“Oh, well, try not to worry about it, Ma. Some fool’s play most likely. Can I help you get supper? I’ll be straight back as soon as I’ve slipped out of these overalls. There’s a lot of work for me afterwards in the dairy.”
She ran upstairs to her room, and on the way down, as she passed Rufus’s door, she called cheerfully, “Rufus, aren’t you coming to supper?”
To her surprise, his door opened immediately, as if he had been hiding behind it, and he came out and followed her meekly downstairs into the kitchen. His excitement had apparently left him, but his healthy colour had not returned and his eyes looked strained and bloodshot. Bad whiskey, she thought, though she said as amiably as she could, “If I were you, I’d go to New York next week even if the job isn’t ready.”
He looked at her gratefully. “I was just thinking I’d better do that.”
His manner was so conciliatory that it made her vaguely uneasy. Jason had been like that, she remembered, in the weeks before he had jilted her, and, unjustly or not, she had come to regard suavity in men with suspicion. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Rufus if he had got into a scrape; but she decided, as she brought his supper to the table, that it was a situation which she had better ignore. No good had ever come, she reflected with the ripe wisdom of experience, of putting questions to a man. What men wished you to know, and occasionally what they did not wish you to know, they would divulge in their own good time. Her mother, she knew, had spent her life trying to make men over, and what had come of her efforts except more trouble and stiffer material to work on?
When she sat down at the table, she expected her mother to begin her usual interrogation; but the old woman allowed Rufus to finish his supper undisturbed. Even when the last cake was lifted from the gridiron, and Mrs. Oakley dropped into her chair behind the tin coffee-pot, she was still silent. The cords in her throat twitched and strained when she raised a cup to her lips, and after a vain effort to swallow, she pushed her plate away with the food untasted.
“Poor Ma,” thought the girl, watching the drawn grey face, where the veins in the temples bulged in knots of pain, “can she never have peace?” A longing seized her to fold the spare frame in her young arms and speak comforting words; but the habit of reserve was like an iron mould from which she could not break away. Nothing but death was strong enough to shatter that inherited restraint and resolve it into tenderness. While words of affection struggled to her lips, all she said was, “You look worn out. Is your neuralgia worse?”
“No, it ain’t worse. I’ve got a stabbing pain in my temple, that’s all.”
Rising from her chair, she began to mix cornbread and gravy for Rambler and Flossie. Though she tottered when she moved, she put aside Dorinda’s offer of help. “I’m used to doing things,” she said, without stopping for an instant. “You and Rufus had better go along about what you want to do.”
The hound and the cat were at her skirts, and she had just put the tin plates down for them and taken up the empty dish, when there was a sound of wheels on the rocks outside, and Dorinda, who was watching Rufus, saw him turn a muddy grey, like the discoloured whitewash on the walls.
“Don’t you let on that I was off this afternoon, Ma,” he whispered hoarsely.
“I declare, Rufus, you talk as if you were crazy,” snapped Mrs. Oakley, flinching from a dart of neuralgia. Though her tone was merely one of irritation, her hands trembled so violently that the china dish she was holding dropped to the floor and crashed into bits. “This china never was a particle of account!” she exclaimed, as she bent over to pick up the pieces.
“I wonder who it can be this time of night?” Dorinda said more lightly than she would have believed possible.
“Maybe I’d better go,” Rufus jerked out.
“You sit right down, son,” his mother retorted tartly.
Going into the hall, Dorinda opened the front door and stood waiting in the square of lamplight on the threshold. It was a dark night, for the moon had not yet risen, and all that she could distinguish was what appeared to be the single shape of a horse and buggy. Only when the vehicle had jogged up the slope among the trees, and the driver had alighted and ascended the steps of the porch, did she recognize the squat shape and flabby features of Amos Wigfall, the sheriff. She had known him at the store in his political capacity as the familiar of every voter; yet friendly as he had always appeared to be, she could not repress a feeling of apprehension while she held out her hand. People, especially farmers, she knew, did not venture out, except with good reason, on bad roads after dark.
“Why, it’s you, Mr. Wigfall!” she exclaimed, with cheerful hospitality. “Ma, Mr. Wigfall is here. I hope you’ve got some supper for him.” And all the time she was thinking, “I might have known Rufus had done something foolish. Poor Ma!”
The sheriff heaved his bulky figure into the house. “I ain’t come to supper, Dorinda,” he said heartily. “Don’t you go and get yo’ Ma upset. I don’t reckon it’s anything to worry about. I wouldn’t have come if I could have helped it.”
Still grasping the girl’s hand, he stood blinking apologetically in the glare of the lamp. His face was so bloated and so unctuous that it might have been the living embodiment of the fee system upon which it had fattened. He was chewing tobacco as he spoke, and wheeling abruptly he spat a wad into the night before he followed Dorinda down the hall to the kitchen. “The fact is I’ve come about Rufus,” he explained, adding, “I hope I ain’t intrudin’, mum,” as he whipped off his old slouch hat with an air of gallantry which reminded Dorinda of the burlesque of some royal cavalier.
“Oh, no, you ain’t intruding, Mr. Wigfall,” Mrs. Oakley replied. “What was it you said about Rufus?”
“He said he was sure it wasn’t anything to worry about,” Dorinda hastened to explain. She did not glance at Rufus while she spoke, yet she was aware that he had risen and was scowling at their visitor.
“Wall, as between friends,” the sheriff remarked ingratiatingly, “I hope thar ain’t a particle of truth in the charge; but Peter Kittery was found dead over by Whistling Spring this evening, and Jacob has got it into his head that ’twas Rufus that shot him.”
“It’s a lie!” Rufus shouted furiously. “I never went near Whistling Spring this evening. Ma knows I was mending her churn for her from dinner till supper time.”
“Wall, I’m downright glad of that, son,” Mr. Wigfall returned, and he looked as if he meant it, fee or no fee. “Yo’ Pa was a good friend to me when he got a chance, and I shouldn’t like to see his son mixed up in a bad business. Jacob says you and Peter had a fuss over cards last night at the store. But if you ain’t been near Whistling Spring,” he concluded, with triumphant logic, “it stands to reason that you couldn’t have done it. You jest let him come along with me, mum,” he added after a pause, as he turned to Mrs. Oakley. “I’ll take good care of him, and send him back to you as soon as the hearing is over to-morrow. Thar ain’t no need for you to worry a mite.”
“I never saw Peter after last night!” Rufus cried out in a storm of rage and terror. “I never went near Whistling Spring. Ma knows I was working over her old churn all the evening.”
His words and his tone struck with a chill against Dorinda’s heart. Why couldn’t the boy be silent? Why was he obliged, through some obliquity of nature, invariably to appear as a braggart and a bully? While she stood there listening to his furious denial of guilt, she was as positive that he had killed Peter Kittery as if she had been on the spot.
For a minute there was silence; then a new voice began to speak, a voice so faint and yet so shrill that it was like the far-off whistle of a train. At first the girl did not recognize her mother’s tone, and she glanced quickly at the door with the idea that a stranger might have entered after the sheriff.
“It couldn’t have been Rufus,” the old woman said, with that whistling noise. “Rufus was here with me straight on from dinner time till supper. I had him mending my old churn because I didn’t want to use one of Dorinda’s new ones. Dorinda went off in the fields to watch the hands,” she continued firmly, “but Rufus was right here with me the whole evening.”
When she had finished speaking, she reached for a chair and sat down suddenly, as if her legs had failed her. Rufus broke into a nervous laugh which had an indecent sound, Dorinda thought, and Mr. Wigfall heaved a loud sigh of relief.
“Wall, you jest come over to-morrow and tell that to the magistrate,” he said effusively. “I don’t reckon there could be a better witness for anybody. Thar ain’t nobody round Pedlar’s Mill that would be likely to dispute yo’ word.” Slinging his arm, he gave Rufus a hearty slap on the back. “I’m sorry I’ve got to take you along with me, son, but I hope you won’t bear me any grudge. It won’t hurt you to spend a night away from yo’ Ma, and my wife, she’ll be glad to have you sample her buckwheat cakes. I hope you’re having good luck with your chickens,” he remarked to Mrs. Oakley as an afterthought. “My wife has been meaning to get over and look at yo’ white leghorns.”
“Tell her I’ll be real glad to see her whenever she can get over,” Mrs. Oakley replied, as she made an effort to struggle to her feet. “Ain’t you going to take any clean clothes to wear to-morrow, Rufus? That shirt looks right mussed.”
Rufus shook his head. “No, I’m not. If they want me, they can take me as I am.”
“Wall, he looks all right to me,” the sheriff observed, with jovial mirth. “I’ll expect you about noon,” he said, as he shook hands. “Don’t you lose a minute’s sleep. Thar ain’t nothing in the world for you to worry about.”
Picking up the kerosene lamp from the table, Dorinda went out on the porch to light the way to the gate. “There’s a bad place near the ‘rockery,’” she cautioned.
He had climbed heavily into the buggy, and Rufus was in the act of mounting between the wheels, when Mrs. Oakley came out of the house and thrust a parcel wrapped in newspaper into the boy’s hand. “There’s a clean collar and your comb,” she said, drawing quickly back. “Be sure not to forget them in the morning.”