III
The log fire was blazing in her bedroom, and John Abner stood before the window which looked on the gate and the road.
“The panes are so frosted you can’t see your hand before you,” he said, as she entered.
Standing there beside him, she gazed through the leafless boughs of the lilac bushes. “No, even the moonlight doesn’t help you,” she answered. “It must be bitterly cold in the road. I hope the mare got warm again.”
“Yes, I covered her up. Nimrod had some whiskey and he was going to make a hot toddy.” John Abner shivered in the icy draught that crept in through the loose window sashes. “Hadn’t you better lie down?” he asked, turning back to the fire. “It won’t be long now.”
She shook her head. “That coffee will keep me awake. Lie down on the couch, and I’ll listen for Elisha. I drew up the shades, so he will know we haven’t gone to bed.”
For a few minutes he resisted her, his eyes blinking in the firelight while he struggled to bite back a yawn. Then he gave up and flung himself down on the big soft couch. “It would take something stronger than coffee to keep me awake to-night,” he said. “If I drop off, will you wake me?”
“If there is any news. But you will hear Elisha when he comes.” He laughed drowsily. “I believe I could sleep straight through Judgment Day.”
Taking the quilt from the bed, she covered him carefully from head to foot. As she tucked him in, she remembered her wedding night when she had found Nathan asleep on the couch in front of the fire. “If he hadn’t been like that, I couldn’t have stood him,” she thought.
Sinking into the easiest chair by the flames, she picked up the sock she had partly darned in the afternoon. Then, observing that the lamp was shining in John Abner’s face, she lowered the wick and folding the sock, replaced it in her work basket. The chair creaked gently as she rocked, and fearing the noise might disturb him, she sat motionless, with her eyes on the hickory logs and her foot touching the neck of the pointer.
While she sat there she recalled, with one of the irresponsible flashes of memory which revived only when she was inactive, the afternoon when she had waited in the dripping woods to see Jason drive home with Geneva. She was a girl then; now she was a woman and middle-aged; yet there was an intolerable quality in all suspense which made it alike. Compared to those moments, this waiting was as the dead to the living agony. “Suppose I had married Jason and he was on that train, could I sit here like this?” she asked herself. “Suppose I had married Jason instead of Nathan, would marriage have been different?”
Then, because the question was useless and she had no room for useless things in her practical mind, she put it sternly away from her, and rising, slipped into her coat and went out of the house. Closing the door softly, she passed out on the porch and down the frozen steps to the lawn. The snow was slippery in thin places, and she knew that Elisha would try to keep to the road where the deep drifts were less dangerous. Advancing cautiously, she moved in the direction of the gate, but she had gone only a few steps when she saw Elisha’s old spring wagon rolling over the bridge. Quickening her steps dangerously, she ran over the slippery ground.
“I’ve kept some hot coffee for you, Uncle Elisha. Can’t you come into the kitchen and get something to eat?”
“Naw’m, I reckon I’d better be gittin’ erlong home. My ole grey mare, she’s had jes’ about enuff er dis yeah wedder, en she’s kinder hankerin’ fur de stable.”
“We can keep her here. There’s plenty of room in the stable, and you can spend the night with Ebenezer.”
“Thanky, Miss Dorindy, bofe un us sutney would be glad uv er spell er res’. My son Jasper, he’s on dat ar train dat’s done been stalled down de track, an’ I’se gwine out agin about’n sunup.”
“Have they heard anything yet?” asked Dorinda, while the wagon crawled over the snags of roots in the direction of the stable.
Elisha shook his muffled head. “Dey don’ know nuttin’, Miss Dorindy, dat’s de Gospel trufe, dey don’ know nuttin’ ’tall. Dar’s a train done come down Pom de Norf, en hit’s gwine on wid whatevah dey could git abo’d hit. Hi! Dey’s got axes erlong, en I ’low dar ain’ nary a one un um dat kin handle an axe like my Jasper.”
“I’m afraid it’s a bad wreck,” Dorinda said uneasily.
“Yas’m, dar’s a wreck somewhar, sho ’nuff, but dey don’ know nuttin’ out dar at de station. All de wires is down, ev’y las’ one un um, en dar ain’ nobody done come erlong back dat went down de road. Ef’n you’ll lemme res’ de night heah, me en de mare’ll go out agin befo’ sunup.”
“There’s all the room in the world, Uncle Elisha. Wait, and I’ll give you a lantern to take to the stable.” She went indoors and returned in a few minutes with a light swinging from her hand. “As soon as you’ve attended to your mare, come in and I’ll have something for you to eat.”
As she passed her bedroom on the way to the kitchen she saw that John Abner was still sleeping, and she did not stop to arouse him. Why should she disturb his slumber when there was nothing definite that she could tell him? Instead, she hastened about her preparations for Elisha’s supper, and by the time the old negro came in from bedding the mare, the bacon and eggs were on the table. Withdrawing to a safe distance from the stove, he thawed his frostbitten hands and feet, while his grizzled head emerged like some gigantic caterpillar from the chrysalis of shawls he had wound about him.
“Were there many people at the station?” she inquired presently.
“Naw’m, hit was too fur fur mos’ folks. Marse John Garlick, he wuz spendin’ de night in de sto’, en so was Marse Jim Ellgood. Young Marse Bob en his wife wuz bofe un um on de train.”
“Well, make a good supper. Then you can go up to Ebenezer’s. I saw smoke coming out of his chimney, so it will be warm there.”
Because she knew that he would enjoy his supper more if he were permitted to eat it alone, she went back to the fire in her bedroom where John Abner was still sleeping. She watched there in the silence until she heard Elisha exclaim, “Good night, Miss Dorindy!” and go out, shutting the back door behind him. Then she locked up the house, and after lowering the wick of the hall lamp, touched John Abner on the shoulder.
“You’d better go to bed. In a little while you will have to be up again.”
He opened his eyes and sat up, blinking at the firelight. “I could have slept on into next week.”
“Well, don’t wake up. Go straight upstairs.”
“Did Elisha ever come?”
“Yes, he put his mare in the stable and went up to spend the night with Ebenezer.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Only that they haven’t found out anything definite at the station. You know how cut off everything is when the wires are down. Mr. Garlick and James Ellgood are both waiting out there all night.”
“Then it was Father’s train. It must have been a bad wreck.”
“I’m afraid so. This suspense is so baffling. Anything in the world might happen, and we shouldn’t know of it until the next day.”
Her face was pale and drawn, and while she spoke, she shivered, not from cold but from anxiety. She saw John Abner glance quickly toward the front window and she knew that he, like herself, was feeling all the terror of primitive isolation. How did people stand it when they were actually cut off by the desert or the frozen North from communication with their kind?
“You know now what it must have been like in the old days before we had the telegraph and the telephone,” she said. “Pedlar’s Mill was scarcely more than a stopping place in the wilderness, and my mother would be shut in for days without a sign from the outer world.”
“I never thought of it before,” said John Abner, “but it must have been pretty rough on her. The roads were no better than frozen bogs, so she couldn’t get anywhere if she wanted to.”
“That was why she got her mania for work. The winter loneliness; she said, was more than she could endure without losing her mind. She had to move about to make company for herself. There were weeks at a time, she told me once, when the roads were so bad that nobody went by, not even Mr. Garlick, or an occasional negro. During the war the trains stopped running on this branch road, and afterwards there were only two trains passing a day.”
“I suppose it was always better on the other side of the railroad.”
“They’re nearer the highway, of course, though that was bad enough when Ma was first married. Over here the roads were never mended unless a few of the farmers agreed to give so much labour, either of slaves or free negroes. Then, after the contract was made, something invariably got in the way and it fell through. Somebody died or fell ill or lost all his crops. You know how indisposed tenant farmers are to doing their share of work.”
“And there wasn’t even a store at Pedlar’s Mill until Father started one?”
“Nothing but the mill. That was there as far back as anybody could remember, and there was always a Pedlar for a miller. The farmers from this side took corn there to be ground, and sometimes they would trade it for sugar or molasses. But the only store was far up at the Courthouse. People bought their winter supplies when they went to town to sell tobacco. All the tobacco money went for coffee and sugar and clothes. That was why Pa raised a crop every year to the end of his life.”
John Abner rose and stretched himself. “Well, I’m precious glad I live in the days of the telephone and the telegraph, with the hope of owning an automobile when they get cheaper.” Going over to the window, he held his hand over his eyes and peered out. “You can’t see a thing but snow. We might as well be dead and buried under it. Shall I take the butter over in the morning?”
“No, I’d like to go myself. You’d better stay and look after the milking.” How inexorable were the trivial necessities of the farm! Anxieties might come and go, but the milking would not wait upon life or death. Not until John Abner had gone upstairs did she perceive that she had been talking, as her mother would have said, “to make company for herself.” “I’ve almost lost my taste for books,” she thought, “and I used to be such a hungry reader.”
After putting a fresh log on the fire, she flung herself on the bed, without undressing, and lay perfectly still while a nervous tremor, like the suspension of a drawn breath, crept over her. Toward daybreak, when the crashing of a dead branch on one of the locust trees sounded as if it had fallen on the roof, she realized that she was straining every sense for the noise of an approaching vehicle in the road. Then, rising hurriedly, she threw open the window and leaned out into the night. Nothing there. Only the lacquered darkness and the moon turning to a faint yellow-green over the fields of snow!
At four o’clock she went into the kitchen and began preparations for breakfast. When the coffee was ground, the water poured over it in the coffee-pot, and the butterbread mixed and put into the baking dish, she returned to her room and finished her dressing. By the time John Abner came down to go out to the cow-barn, she was waiting with her hat on and a pile of sheepskin rugs at her feet.
“I suppose we might as well send the butter out. Fluvanna has it ready,” she said, watching him while he lighted his lantern from the lamp on the breakfast table. “If the trains have begun running again, they will expect it in Washington.”
“It won’t hurt anyway to take it along. I’ll tell Nimrod to hitch up.”
They both spoke as if the wreck had been merely a temporary inconvenience which was over. Vaguely, there swam through Dorinda’s mind the image of her mother cooking breakfast in her best dress before she went to the Courthouse. The old woman had worn the same expression of desperate hopefulness that Dorinda felt now spreading like a mask of beeswax over her own features. Already, though it was still dark, the life of the farm was stirring. As John Abner went out, she saw the stars of lanterns swinging away into the night, and when he returned to breakfast, Fluvanna was in the kitchen busily frying bacon and eggs. Before they had finished the meal, Nimrod appeared to say that the wagon was waiting, and rising hastily Dorinda slipped on her raccoon-skin coat.
“We’d better start,” she said. “Give Uncle Elisha his breakfast, and tell him we will bring Jasper back with us. Keep the kettle on, so you can make coffee for Mr. Nathan as soon as he gets here.”
Hurrying out, she climbed into the heavy wagon, and they started carefully down the slippery grade to the road. As they turned out of the gate, the wheels slid over the embedded rocks to the frozen ruts in the snow. Only a circle of road immediately in front of them was visible, and while the wagon rolled on, this spot of ground appeared to travel with them, never changing and never lingering in its passage. Into this illuminated circle tiny tracks of birds drifted and vanished like magic signs.
Presently, as they drew nearer Pedlar’s Mill, a glimmer, so faint that it was scarcely more than a ripple on the surface of black waters, quivered in the darkness around them. With this ripple, a formless transparency floated up in the east, as a luminous mist swims up before an approaching candle. Out of this brightness, the landscape dawned in fragments, like dissolving views of the Arctic Circle. The sky was muffled overhead, but just as they reached the station a pale glow suffused the clouds beyond the ruined mill on the horizon.
“If the train was on time, it must have gone by an hour ago,” Dorinda said, but she knew that there was no chance of its having gone by.
“Hit’s gwinter thaw, sho’ nuff, befo’ sundown,” Nimrod rejoined, speaking for the first time since they started.
“Yes, it’s getting milder.”
At that hour, in the bitter dawn, the station looked lonelier and more forsaken than ever. Hemmed in by the level sea of ice, the old warehouse and platform were flung there like dead driftwood. Even the red streak in the sky made the winter desolation appear more desolate.
At first she could distinguish no moving figures; but when they came nearer, she saw a small group of men gathered round an object which she had mistaken in the distance for one of the deserted freight cars.
Now she saw that this object was a train of a single coach, with an engine attached, and that the men were moving dark masses from the car to crude stretchers laid out on the snow.
“The trains are running again,” Dorinda said hoarsely. “They must have got the track cleared.”
“I hope dey’s gwinter teck dis yeah budder,” Nimrod returned. “Git up heah, hosses! We ain’ got no mo’ time to poke.”
A chill passed down Dorinda’s spine; but she was unaware of the cause that produced it, and her mind was vacant of thought. Then, while the wagon jolted up the slope, some empty words darted into her consciousness. “Something has happened. I feel that something has happened.”
“Do you see anybody that you know, Nimrod?”
“Naw’m, I cyarn see nobody.” Then he added excitedly, “But dar’s somebody a-comin’. Ain’ he ole Marse Jim Ellgood?”
The horses stopped by the fence and began nuzzling the snow, while Nimrod dropped the reins and jumped down to lift out the butter. Standing up in the wagon, Dorinda beat her chilled hands together. Her limbs felt stiff with cold, and for a moment they refused to obey her will. Then recovering control of herself, she stepped down from the wagon and followed Nimrod in the direction of the store. Immediately, she was aware of a bustle about the track, and she thought, “How much human beings are like turkeys!” The group of men had separated as she approached, and two figures came forward to meet her across the snow. One was a stranger; the other, though it took her an instant to recognize him, was Bob Ellgood. “Why, he looks like an old man,” she said to herself. “He looks as old as his father.” The ruddy, masterful features were scorched and smoke-stained, and the curling fair hair was burned to the colour of singed broomsedge. Even his eyes looked burned, and one of his hands was rolled in a bandage.
She stopped abruptly and stood motionless. Though she was without definite fear, an obscure dread was beating against the wall of her consciousness. “Something has happened. Something has happened. Something has happened.” Her mind seemed to have no relation to herself, to her feelings, to her beliefs, to her affections. It was only an empty shed; and the darkness of this shed was filled suddenly with the sound of swallows fluttering.
When Bob Ellgood reached her, he held out his unbandaged hand. “Father and I were just going over to your place, Mrs. Pedlar,” he said. “We wanted to be the first to see you. We wanted you to hear of Nathan from us——”
“Then he is dead,” she said quietly. It had never seemed possible to her that Nathan could die. He had not mattered enough for that. But now he was dead.
“He died a hero,” a stranger, whom she had never seen before, said earnestly.
“Yes, he died a hero,” Bob Ellgood snatched the words away from the other. “That is what we wish you to know and to feel as long as you live. He gave his life for others. He had got free, without a scratch, and he went back into the wreck. The train had gone over the embankment. It was burning and women were screaming. He went down because he was strong. He went down and he never came back.”
“God! Those shrieks!” exclaimed the strange man. “I’ll hear them all my life. As long as I live, I’ll never stop hearing them.”
“He got free?” she repeated stupidly.
“But he went back. He got an axe from somebody, and he went back because he was strong. He was cutting the car away to get a woman out. He did get her out——” He broke off and added hastily, “When we found him, he was quite dead....”
Dorinda stared at him vacantly, seeing nothing but his blackened features and the scorched place on his head. “Will they bring him to the farm?” she asked.
“If you wish it.” Bob’s voice was shaken. “But we feel that we should like him to rest in the churchyard.”
Silently, scarcely knowing what he asked, she assented. So Nathan had forced people to take him seriously, even though he had to die before they would do it. Was it worth it? she wondered. Would it have pleased him if he had known?
“May I go to the church? Have they taken him there?”
She saw that Bob hesitated before he answered. “I hope you won’t see him,” he replied after a minute. “We believe he was killed instantly, but——” He broke off and then went on desperately, “If you will go home and leave the arrangements to us, we promise you that everything shall be as he would have wished. We should like him to have the funeral of a hero.”
“The funeral of a hero!” she echoed. She did not know, she could not imagine what kind of funeral that would be; but she felt intuitively that Nathan would have liked it, and that she had no right to deny him the funeral that he would have liked.
Without replying in words, she bent her head and turned back to the wagon, where a completely demoralized Nimrod awaited her. A stunned sensation held her emotions imprisoned, and a few minutes later, as she drove homeward, it occurred to her that she was proving unequal again to one of the supreme occasions of her life. Emotionally, would she always prove unequal to the demands of life? She was not feeling what she knew that she ought to feel; she was not feeling what she knew that they expected of her. Her stern judgment told her that she was a hypocrite; but it was hypocrisy against which she was inert and helpless. Though she was overwhelmed by the general tragedy, she was without a keen sense of widowhood. Something within her soul, that thin clear flame which was herself, remained unshaken by her loss, as it had remained unshaken by every tragedy but one in her life. She was leaving Nathan, with regret but not with grief, to his belated popularity. How could she begrudge him in death the thing that he had wanted most when he was alive? Yes, beholding him as she did with compassion but without pretense, she knew that he would have enjoyed the funeral of a hero.