Anne Ryan, The Darkest Leaf

2953 Anne Ryan, available writings index

Anne Ryan. “The Darkest Leaf.” Botteghe Oscure 22 (1958) : 272-306
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The early days of September are cold in the mountains; upland pastures and orchards along a single road are sere and brittle with weeds crackling in the frosty wind. All the lushness of summer is past; cattle draw closer together in the morning air so damp and open to the sound of their copper bells. Even inside a house echoes are more resounding because the windows are closed against the cold and the first silence of the year has entered after the boisterous summer.
In a farmhouse on a road which ran along a mountain plateau an uncertain footfall was audible. A man eighty years old, was getting up out of his thick bed and drawing on his faded clothes. Before he put his foot on the narrow steps of the back stairs which let down out of his room and turned to the kitchen, he waited a moment as though the new thoughts of a plan he held so clearly in his head needed another pause. The day had begun again for him, John Wilton, a farmer of Pattendale, an old man known to all the upland people because he and his family had spent a hundred years on the same land. His own usefulness was gone now; he was known as a farmer but he was finished with crops and animals, finished with seasons. Decay and the silence of decay were all around him. A few dull memories were his only company. Each day as it grew light in his low-ceilinged room over the kitchen, he accepted the coming hours as a level and stilled place where every action and footstep were known [273] beforehand. The long monotony of age and the sorrow of age engulfed him.
As he drew on his clothes this September day, there was more animation in his thoughts. He had resolved to go on a journey, a short visit and no one knew of it — not his son Bert, who lived in the new house at the end of the pasture with the stream running before his door, nor Bert’s mean wife, Cora. When he had gone to eat dinner with them yesterday at noontime as he always did because he was too old to cook for himself, he had clamped his sly and resentful lips on his secret. To see Jessie, that was his purpose. What could be more natural or sensible than to want to see his daughter?
He thought he knew perfectly well where she was although it had been years since he had been to Stroudsburg. It was the next big town on the border of Pennsylvania. The address she had given him in her plain hand-writing rested under the clock on the parlor mantel. When he touched the flimsy piece of paper it always seemed to crinkle in his stiff fingers. Last night he had folded it carefully into his wallet where the street name and the numbers would be safe. Not once did he think he could not find her. He had no misgivings at all. Bert knew where she was too; he had often talked of Jessie at the table to Cora, never to him, as though there were something to be hidden.
Jessie was a grown woman now. They actually did not know much about her and they let her alone. She lived as she wanted.
Yet that did not do away with her father’s need of her. Day after day as he sat in the sun on the kitchen porch, he looked at the dying farm with fields stretehing away before him, his hundred acres still and weathered with not a hand to weed or plant or tidy up. Jessie had left years ago; he could not remember how long now, perhaps five. Time was uncertain to him. Every summer she returned for a visit. She told them very little, either her father or Bert. From a few words here or there they knew she had been a waitress, had worked in some kind of store, another time in a factory. Perhaps she did not want them to pry too much. In the height of the summer she came home for her holiday. She was hearty and fun-loving, making sport of Bert’s laziness or [274] Cora’s meagre, careful living and her father was always delighted with her blousy looks and her quick banter. For a few weeks while she was there the farm woke up. She loved animals and was always telling him about the chickens and the hunting dogs she would raise. There was great sympathy between these two. Jessie would look deep into her father’s eyes and a laugh finished the sentence and they always knew the meaning. That was how close they were. What he wanted and what she chose were about the same every time.
When she left a hundred nagging fears came back to him. Each noontime he walked the footpath to Bert’s house and Cora laid his full plate, singly and neatly before him and whether he liked what was on it or not he had to eat it. He was alone even when he was with them. At home silence was in the old, ill-kept rooms. One person, Jessie, there or gone, made a difference. When he sat outside on the kitchen porch he was so still that a neighbor passing on the road did not notice him and walked by without speaking. That was not like country people. Now he had come to the day when he wanted Jessie back so much that he was going to find her.
—
All these were his thoughts as he went down that morning into the kitchen. Early morning light shone on the deal table. His supper dishes washed and turned down were waiting for him just as he had left them the night before. The fire was low; he could hear it breathing in the iron range and he poked it a little and opened the drafts. Some swallows which nested in the chimney flew out into the morning air.
All his days were alike. Perhaps the town of Stroudsburg where he was going was changed since he had been there years ago. The one remaining animal on the farm was Jessie’s pony named Midnight and he had kept it for her. He would hitch up the farm wagon and would go down the back road not passing Bert’s house. No one would see him.
The hours to noon passed quickly; his thoughts were leaping ahead bright and clear. He sat in the sun resting his hands on his stick and heard the pony whinny, its head [275] nodding out the barn door and its stamp echoing in the empty loft. That was the only sound. The chicken houses were empty and the two wells were flagged over so the well-chains were still. All the water he needed was in the cistern near the kitchen door. Beyond the barn he could see the ruined orchard; grass-stalks grew as high as the scraggly branches and made their own soughing rustle. Bert never had time for pruning or cutting and the neglected trees were like a wasteland beside the road. The old man knew every inch of the farm. His father had worked it before him, his wife had died there. Now he had lost count of the years and he spoke to his neighbors as though he were in a better, earlier time and always as though his wife were living. Perhaps he expected to see her come around the corner of the summer kitchen carrying an armful of corn or a pail of eggs... but it never happened.
Bert had the best part of the farm near the stream. When he married he took what he wanted to build on. The new house seemed bright and flimsy to John, and Cora was in it, the mean, parsimonious Cora. Bert plowed only the single field he needed for his chicken corn and made a truck-garden near his back door. Cora tended it, weeded and planted again and again all summer; as soon as one row was finished she had Bert spade it up and put in new seedlings. Every week some of each harvest was saved for the winter. She was good at making a store of glass jars in the cellar but she was not a farm woman. Bert was lazy and just as scanty with his living. No children, no farming, neither Bert nor Jessie. Why was it Jessie never married? What prevented her? Too stilled in his thoughts, too cryptic with age, he sat there and could not fathom the reasons. He was going to her this day. He waited for the bright noon to edge around into the grassy yard.
—
Bert and Cora did not understand why he hurried with his food. Afterward, for some reason, they watched him out of the window as he walked back on the road that day and thought he was better than he had been in years. His secret made him careful and hurried. He went out to the barn to [275] harness the pony, the soft, worn leather slid into each buckle with a snap, pulled easy and tight.
Then he went back to the house for something important to him. Down in the cellar there were the usual country shelves hanging from wires on the old beams. They were laden with jars of preserves half-glistening under a thin mantle of dust. Jessie had put up these jars when she had been home that summer and he never touched them. They were hers. He remembered her happy face as she gathered the wild fruit and berries in the overgrown patches near the house or further on through the woods and fallow fields and came back with her arms steadying the heavy baskets. Blackberries, foxgrapes or the small, dense apples almost bitter with flavor from some forgotten orchard like his own were all her store. In the dusk at the kitchen table she hulled the tiny fruits, separated and washed even the smallest and he had helped her. By the next afternoon the sideboard, the window-sills and the table were bright with jars, rich and vivid with color like bouquets under glass. These days were the best of the year. When Bert went to town Jessie gave him her own money for sugar. Every time a lid was turned down on a full jar Jessie could feel a satisfaction add up for her father; he was part of the year’s round again, deep and secure in the year’s worth. August with its great light deepened and waned and suddenly the first mornings of September were hollow and cold.
One day Jessie was gone and he had to rouse himself to get up or to close the kitchen door. He moved slowly about the house. The parlor and the carpeted stairs going up to the two musty bedrooms at the front seemed more useless to him than ever.
A question deepened in his mind, why did she always go back? Perhaps the farm was too much for them, needed too much or more than they had money for. Ruin was everywhere. To John fumbling at the straps of the pony, going down into the cellar for a box of Jessie’s preserves, glancing out at the weedy fields or the orchard, the ruin was plain and the silence touched every living thing.
Jessie was the reason for his journey. The one vigorous, capable person who could manage the farm had left him. [276] There must be some answer why Jessie had to live in a town, something beyond the boredom of the farm. He had never fathomed her faults nor the excuses she made to leave him again and again. Every one was not alike; what made one person ambitious and active stilled another. He walked over to the wagon and put the preserves in their cardboard box on the frayed leather seat. He climbed up and took the reins and turned out into the short driveway, getting onto the road as quietly as he could. The jars in the box beside him made their own tiny clinking. He was determined she would see them. It was the one reminder he was sure of; all the summer and the pleasure they had had together would return with the sight of them. Farther on the road he thought he must make them more secure and he got down out of the wagon and picked some long grass to wind around them, bedded them down in their own tight nest; then he went on again.
—
Almost at once he had the misfortune to have a neighbor see him. He thought he had picked the time when everyone would be busy in the height of the day and he could pass without speaking to anyone, but he might have remembered that neighbors looked out at the sound of wheels, if it were not some woman in a kitchen then a man or a boy in a shed looked out.
A gate on the road opened and Ira Thorne came towards him, asking him questions. Where was he going dressed like that, even with his straw hat on his head? He told the truth at once with an old man’s confusion. Where was he going? To Stroudsburg. Ira looked carefully at the box of preserves with the grass sticking out of it. «Certainly must be going to see Jessie,» he said with a wink that tortured the side of his leathered face. John was aghast that the whole scheme was as plain as that to anyone. He was furious because Ira was laughing, showing his big teeth. He stood there in his work clothes, his grey eyes shining because he had guessed the secret so easily. «Does Bert know?» he asked.
[278]
«No, he doesn’t.» John kept his faded gaze straight down the road. «It’s none of his business. I want Jessie... »
«We all know that,» said Ira. Yes, the whole top of the mountain knew it, thought about it and tried to figure it out. «Are those her preserve jars?» Ira asked.
«Yes, they’re hers.» John was short with him. «And what’s more, if she doesn’t come back with me, I won’t leave them...» It was the one definite protest he could make. If she refused to come, all his country narrowness and meanness would spring out and make him take the jars home again. The meagreness of his life showed in that resolve: «I’ll bring them back,» he said.
Ira began to snicker. «That’s right,» he said, «they’re really yours...» They both knew that was hardly true. As Ira stood there he looked off into the first woods beyond his pasture and began to talk about something that troubled him. «There’s a man in that woods,» he said, «living by himself.» Everyone was known on the mountain and a stranger was suspicious.
«How does he live?» asked John. «What does he do?»
«He stands up at night on the side of the rise of ground there and preaches, hollers to the trees if there’s no people... calls and calls... sometimes my neighbor creeps out of her bed and runs through the fields... she can always hear him when he starts... she never goes alone though. By the time she gets there other people have run too.»
John listened but his face did not change. Ira was known as an over-religious man and such things as a preacher in a wood made him invent tales. No one could talk to him without his starting to quote some tract he had in his pocket.
«A man in the woods? Have you seen him?»
There is always a grain of mystery in the deep country. People think they are secure and then suddenly there is a new voice from a man who was not there the night before and a secret everyone knows pours through the monotony of their days and they are glad enough for it.
«I’ve seen him,» said Ira. «A preacher like that stirs me.» He went into the night woods following after the footsteps of the others trampling on the brittle leaves.
«I must go,» said John. «I don’t want Bert to catch up [279] with me.» He looked sideways at Ira but did not ask favors. «Before noon I’ll be back...» Ira knew he went to eat at Bert’s at noontime. He smiled and was willing to keep the secret.
The wheels set up a rich creaking in the road. The first hours seemed sweet and almost faultless, he felt neither tired nor hungry but relieved and quiet. The familiar turns were known beforehand; the view from the hill where he started down into the state highway, the red barns, the gables, even the stretches of shade, were all in their remembered places. The first hours were easy, vague. The terrible excitement, worry and upset came later when he had lost his way.
—
Streets looked queer to him, tight with brick and sound, tight with hurry. Lights were shining in them in the daytime and at the corners red or green signals. The quick horns were a crisscross of blasts and scared the pony whose nervous feet were enmeshed in orders, stop, go, wait, faster. The whole quiver, fright and anxiety of the old man passed into the motions of the beast. John tried to ask, tried to crane his neck at the crossings to see the street names but he had to go by so fast that the signs were gone before he could make them out. He pulled up to the curb to get at the paper in his wallet. The writing on it had muddled for him.
A sharp whistle cut the air. A policeman came over to him. This was the town, thick with people, insistent with signals, faces and nods and quick footsteps crossing and crossing.
«Where do you want to go?» asked the policeman. John showed the crumpled slip of paper, the writing worn, rotted out with wear from turning and twisting in his thick fingers.
«You’re on the wrong street,» said the policeman. In a moment of quiet the policeman took a pad out of his inner pocket, tore off a sheet and copied the faded address in a bold hand. Then he drew a few lines to indicate the streets and it looked like the branch of a tree with names standing out on the twigs.
«I’ll get there,» said John. «It can’t be far now,» and as he started up the policeman saw him squeeze the paper [280] he had just given him into the reins and tear the flimsy sheet across the center.
The whole far plan dwindled. The easy road had become a maze tight and webby across the minutes and hours.
It was almost dark when he found the street and the house. He tied the pony carefully to the nearest tree and went up the flag walk. A woman came to the door and it was not Jessie. The woman was vague, hesitated, listened. The name Jessie Wilton was like something that came back to her from far away. She remembered the reason why Jessie had left but she did not tell him. His jaw twitched. His lips were empty. «Where?» he asked and that word, meek and puzzled, made her search with her thoughts into the months just passed.
«It’s so long ago...» she said evasively. «If I were you, I’d go back... Go home and write to her... Maybe the post office knows the address.»
That word «post office» brightened him.
«If you’re going there you'd better hurry,» said the woman. «Go this way...» and she made pointings with her fingers, made lines vacant and lost in the air.
Actually the post office knew, when he got there. At a special window, a quick hand ran along a page and found the name and address. It was a house on the edge of the town; the unpainted clapboards were gray and curled from weathering, the windows murky and neglected. The sound of the bell echoed in the bare hall. Jessie opened the door. Her surprise had something of dismay in it. She saw her father standing there, his two hands grasping a small cardboard box. He was smiling dimly and not able to speak.
Her first thought was for catastrophe. «What has happened?» she asked quickly. Only one or two things could bring him, perhaps a fire or maybe Bert or Cora had died.
«Nothing,» said her father. «I just wanted to see you.»
Anxiety drained out of her face, left her blank and hollow. She held the door open for him to come in. He was smiling with uneasiness, still frightened, still apprehensive. They went into a plain sitting-room and he laid the box of preserves on the marble-top table in the center. It was almost dusk; the clean, dead room had an unused, musty air. Everything in there was a little old-fashioned, just leftovers from [281] some other life, sparse and drab and cold. He was trembling with relief and sat down in a chair by the window.
Jessie stood fingering the preserves, feeling the jars among the grass. The scent of the country rose from the box. She looked as blousy and good-natured as ever. She grew easy standing there, accepted his coming and knew she would be able to persuade him to anything.
«Why did you come?» she asked.
There was only one thought for him, one need. «For you — to bring you back.» He wanted so much the dim comfort of someone else in the house with him, of another footfall or a breath upon the glass as a face looked out the window; he wished for someone to talk to, to consult with, to answer questions, for someone to pull the wellchains, to feed the pony, to close the door at night and not to be alone.
«Come back,» he said. «I’m tired of Cora. She’s finicky, exacting. I want dinner in my own house.» It was certainly reason enough. He went on in half sentences and the meagreness of his days spread out before her.
She was fussing with the jars and did not want to hear him speaking to her. All at once she turned abruptly into the open doorway leading into another room. Perhaps she could not speak. Perhaps her throat had tightened with pity, or was someone listening behind the door? She had a queer attitude. How could he know sitting bent in the strange chair by the window? She left him there alone and silent. His hand fumbled in his pocket, touched the useless slip of paper where the wrong address was written and felt for his blue handkerchief. Fright crept up the nerves of his arms. «Jessie,» be called in as loud a voice as he could.
No one answered. He tried to get up but all his strength had run out in some unaccountable way. «Jessie!» In the silence a step sounded and he knew at once it was not hers. A man stood in the doorway, a tall man with graying hair, a sharp face and long arms. He was coming towards him. One question flashed in John’s mind and then answered itself — the whole dreary round of Jessie living together with someone, a man he did not know, spread out in his mind. This is what the woman tried to make him avoid when she told him to go back, why her answers had been so brief and evasive. A man [282] he had never heard of before was standing in the room. There was a low impatience in his voice. From the way he spoke, from the first words on, John could sense the outcome. Anger and panic mixed in his feelings; all the easy, pleasant days with Jessie folded one over the other as a screen is closed up and put away. There was nothing for John to do but to turn his head and look out the window. New winds fall and sweep the little dust outside and his black gaze meets the whole world. Time breaks in two, the dull, safe time before he came and the now, blotted and secret with her name in the center. His grieving was like a shadow around that name. He could not unfasten his stare out the window into the dark.
The tall man moved nearer, seemed ready to help, to get him out of the chair and into the warmih and friendliness of the kitchen. No one likes to look on another’s grief or despairs and the man was bluff and embarrassed. He took hold of John’s arm.
«Come on,» he said. «Jessie is getting us something to eat.» Everyday wants and needs were pulling them back.
Jessie spoke from the doorway. «It’s all right, father.» She came over and put an arm around his shoulders. He was as limp as a child in her hands.
He saw the tiny kitchen, more lived in than the other room. The square yellow table was used and clean. Plates and cups were on shelves fringed with cut-out newspaper. Everything was more friendly, more alive there and they began to eat. But a silence grew. John was not able to say a word. The hurt was too fresh. All his old disappointment, deep and centered in his children, welled up within him. A thousand plans and hopes that he had held for them were completely lost. Nothing had turned out right. It was suddenly clear to him that what he had learned or what he had saved all his life was useless. It would have been better not to have known about Jessie. His dislike of Cora was simple almost easy compared to this and the quiet of home acceptable. There was little use in being indignant. It was too serious for that and any question he could ask would only add to his hurt. He was silent; his hands trembled as he fingered his bread or the few mouthfuls he ate. He was confus-[283]ed and aghast that he did not even know the name of the man who sat across the table from him.
«I think it’s better that you go back,» said Jessie. It was their whole thought. «But I’ll go with you. I’lll see that you get there...» They talked in low, tired voices as though some vigor or security had run out of their lives. His exhaustion was clear to them. They could see it on his dark face, count its marks plainly in his trembling hands and his lowered eyes. They were afraid he would get sick on their hands.
—
Jessie stood close to Jim Morrison as though she expected some comfort from his arms and they both peered intently at the old man. He had sunk in his chair, asleep now with the warmth of the meal.
«It’s better to rouse him,» said Jim. «It will be late when you get to the top of the mountain. With that pony it will take two hours,» and he grinned at the thought of the tired beast trudging up the long climb.
«I’ll stay the night with him, but I’ll leave before he wakes up. I’ll get the first bus back.» She wanted Jim to be sure she would return and smiled into his smile and it was as close as water meeting and blending. With the half-security she had with Jim she was happy. The few bits he had told her of himself made many doubtful moments for her hovering from ecstasy to some small blankness and back again, she shut her thoughts against surprises. They had been living together two years and they seemed to need no one else in their life. And she had not asked questions.
Now she waked her father as she would a child, «Come, dear, come, don’t you want to go home?» Jim helped her put on his coat and down the wooden steps to the wagon and called goodbye when they started. Jessie left the empty streets and got off the highway by the first dirt road.
Then her thoughts wandered. There were many small puzzles about Jim Morrison. The first time she met him was like a bright, sudden sun, a circle where both had stood enclosed, rapt, high-voiced and in love. Everyday after that he waited near the factory where she worked and they went [284] out slowly together into the streets. Noise and crowds were as good as walls for these first meetings. He was a teacher in a high-school. Books, schedules and a discipline were his whole day. «You mustn’t tell anyone you were here,» he said one night. «Don’t talk to anyone,» and he walked hurriedly back with her to the woman’s house where she lived. Then he moved one day and she went with him, felt happy and free that she had made a definite change.
She understood perfectly that his teaching depended on her silence. «No one will know — not from me,» she told him. Two people could be lost in a huge city sprawling and hawking and rattling past the windows.
The months were happy, full of easy chores in her own house and questions waited, were drawn out and waited again. Some days she was sure Jim would let her hear something about his years before she met him. But it always seemed too soon or too dangerous to his job. He was sedate and quiet, an older man. Jessie wanted marriage, wanted the set patterns but she gradually decided that silence was right for them both, decided that the unknown core was worth all the love and hopes between them. What she had and longed for was to be warm, free and safe with Jim and not to come to any end of it. So she stayed and questioned neither backwards nor forward for one was as blank and hidden as the other.
—
These were her thoughts as the pony strained and rocked up the last road to the mountain plateau. The farm houses stood under the huge bare trees in the darkness and the dogs ran out in the cold but Jessie called them by their names and they went back over the snow. When she got to the house it looked deserted and poor. She helped her father at every step, into the kitchen, up the turning back stairs and put him to bed.
She would not sleep in the front bedroom because it was bitter and musty with winter but lay down on a couch in the kitchen.
Before it was light she was gone, walking along the mountain in the soft cold and down the long hill two miles to the bus.
[285]
At noontime Ira Thorn saw John on the back porch. Ira was a friendly neighbor always willing to hear the news. «I thought about you in the night... heard the wagon come up the road but I fell asleep before it passed,» and he smiled. He was safe and easy in his life.
John gave him a twisted glance. There was not much to tell for what there was Ira need not know. «Jessie brought me... she has gone again.»
Ira looked across the field. He had a four-room stone house, iwo rooms up and two down, with a blank stairway in the middle. It was flush to the road and he knew every step that went by. «I heard her go before it was light. The mountain was too much for her, full of cold and mud.»
John’s mouth was stubborn, he did not grope for any answers.
A sly smile spread in Ira’s face. «Summer will be here in no time, then she’ll come back,» he said. He loved to think of hunting and roaming and lush summer nights. He had his few acres around his house, planted in berries and fruit trees and truck. He was actually a lazy farmer with only his own food to grow. Inward and lonely, a stark excitement moved in his mind and made him put a weird value on the simplest occurrence. Anyone who talked of religion to him was welcome. The memory of the preacher in the wood wove in and out of his thoughts. He stood there in a long reverie with his foot propped against the step of the porch and he asked John, «Will you come?»
«Come where?»
«To see the place in the wood where the preacher had his hut...»
John was startled. Then he remembered. He wanted to know whose land the hut was on, if the preacher would come this year and what neighbors went to see this man. «No, I won’t go,» he said. «I’m too tired.» Weariness and defeat of all his far plans about Jessie deadened him. «I’m only able to get over to Bert’s.»
Ira stood there and talked about the summer nights. «The women run through the brush and make a noise going... they don’t care how they go... they fall down on the hummacks laughing, stumble over rocks, gasp and pant. By the time [286] they reach the preacher in the clearing under the oaks, where there’s no path and no light, they’re ready to drop. Sometimes twenty people get up out of their beds, rouse up from their sleep and go. When they are home again they have that night to think about.» Ira remembered how the women looked when the preacher finished. They were silent, mystified, because he spoke to no one, just went into his hut like another shadow and no one followed, no one went near. The women sat and leaned against each other in the stiff grass and did not move.
«I’ll go sometime,» said John. Ira could see how played out he was. One thought troubled him. He looked directly at Ira, «I don’t want Bert or Cora to know about yesterday. Don’t tell them. They would nag me with questions...» Everyone knew Ira was talkative.
«I’m not going that way,» Ira said and his smile was — gentle. His heavy lids drooped over his eyes and he took his foot off the porch.
At noontime John got up stiffly and walked the path along the top of the road to Bert’s. When Cora put his plate down before him she glanced at his tired, ashen face and his uncertain hands.
«You don’t look yourself, Pa,» she said. She sensed something, but what? What could old John have done? Nothing. They began to talk about Jessie and wondered where she was now.
Bert said, «She’s gone away from the house where she lived with the woman. I found that out.» He drove the car into town for ice once a week. But that was all he did know.
John hurried with his eating, rattling his fork against his plate. «Aren’t you interested, Pa?» asked Cora. «We’re talking about Jessie... we don’t know where she is...» When he did not answer she said to Bert, «He’s as lost as a child, as feather-headed as a coot.»
«He looks tired,» said Bert between his lips. Sometimes they acted as if he were deaf or a puppet.
—
Winter settled down on the mountain farms. In the storms and the winds Bert brought a dinner for John in a basket. He [287] busied himself for half an hour, turned up the stove and heated the food. He brought enough wood in from the summer kitchen.
John sat near the low windows. The chair had a gray blanket thrown over it and he could pull it around him if he grew cold. Outside a far stillness and whiteness covered the fields.
One night late in February he woke softly out of a deep sleep. Bert’s dog was barking and a step was moving on the kitchen porch.
It was Jessie. He knew at once who it was. She turned the knob of the door which was never locked and came to the back stairs. «Don’t be frightened, Pa!» Her voice was low but he heard her.
He got up at once and drew on his clothes and then in the darkness of the room he could feel her heavy arms fold about him in a great hug. «What’s happened?» he asked worried and excited.
«Everything, everything. It’s over, over and done. All my days with Jim — all my love.» Her voice was tense, her body stiffened. Why was she here, a strong, high-spirited woman coming home in the night? She told him in one breath, her great reason burst into words. «I found out my life with Jim was to be nothing. When I asked Jim about a certain letter, he didn’t evade. There were no lies, just hurt and pain at the end... The letter was in a poor, cramped handwriting. I gave it to Jim, asked him and his answer was quick, hard and brutal. He still had a wife, almost forgotten, deserted for years... The letter was the past opening for him. There was nothing else in our minds for days. I heard him talk, listened to him talk it out.» She sat silently beside her father thinking of the last weeks. She was used to what happened to people yet the great intricacies of love began to baffle her. To be certain and sure one night, deep and warm, their two lives laced together, blended together and by the next to feel a blank strangeness, to feel a change engulfing them, hopeless with each far plan swept aside singly, almost gently, that was what made her fear with a silence all around her. She kept thinking of the letter, of the deception, the hurt for them all — especially for the woman never spoken of, remote, [288] deprived and forgotten. It went deep with her that her days with Jim were over.
She spoke to her father again. «I couldn’t accept that kind of life anymore,» she said and her voice sounded dull in the blank dark. «In the end what would I have? Something complicated and mean. By the time we had thought out what was best to do and started to do it, months, perhaps years would have passed and there would be nothing for any of us, only suffering.» She was suddenly silent, overwhelmed.
«You did right to come home,» said John, «I am glad you’re here — glad you’re with me again.» A great happiness was spreading in his body, a new warmth, a bright prospect. He did not question her for he thought he might find out too much. His complete acceptance was his answer to all she had told him.
They sat a few minutes longer on the bed and then went down into the kitchen as though it were morning. Her spirits rose again in the familiar room, she could not stop talking from excitement and relief and said the same things over and over. «I could not stay there,» she said. Her thought of cities, factories, crowded living was still with her.
Her father wanted to distract her. «Bert will look out the window and see the light.» John enjoyed that. «He must have heard his dog bark when you passed.»
«Let him,» said Jessie. Her laugh was full and rich. She moved about the kitchen turning up the fire, found everything easily, felt along the shelf for the glass coffee jar still in its place where she had left it between the pots and pans.
This was the great night of the year for John. The deep cold outside and the mountain silence stretched away.
—
Ira Thorne was there the next day. They knew he would be. «I heard you come in the night.» He was smiling at Jessie. Questions and answers too were in his eyes. John wanted to tease him. «Don’t tell him, Jessie,» he said. «Look at him dancing from one foot to the other waiting to hear everything —» They were laughing.
«Does Bert know?» asked Ira.
«You tell him,» said Jessie, «fill his head up with all [289] you have heard about me.» Her high spirits made her voice loud. «I’m home for good,» she said, «I’ll take over now.» Ira was silent for a moment. «That’s what we all wanted.» The whole countryside remembered how strong-willed she was, how she had gone away and stayed three years.
After Ira left she sat all day with her father and planned for them, planned months and years ahead. The same strength her mother had flowed again in Jessie, the same easy vigor had come back to his hundred acres. Fields not used for years were talked about, the roofs, the three wells, the barns were gone over in their talk. Years were turned back; new energy seemed to sift through their thoughts like a good wheat is sifted in the hand, flowing like gold.
In a few days neighbors heard she had returned. They brought her the young animals they did not need to start her stocks again and gave her twists of paper full of prized seeds.
As soon as the weather turned she borrowed a plow and horses and Bert made one field ready. He was grudging, envious of her, greedy. «You’ll get all you need out of one field,» he said. «The rest can go —» That was his notion, a small patch for a truck garden and, to get the cash they needed, chickens and eggs to sell at the store when they went to town once a week,
She laughed at Bert and laughed with her father too. «Maybe he’ll pay us some rent for the field he uses,» she said. But they never asked him.
Ira helped her fix the setting coops and nailed up the holes in the barns. Her pony stamped near the stable door to get out and knew about the new grass under the thin snow before she did. A frail sun swept bright patches on the south field and in the glen the brook rushed dark and full.
—
Jessie heard all the gossip, dreamy or sharp of the upland farms. She listened to women talking in their doorways or sitting in a shed with some task in their hands. Ira came with his hunting beagles and they walked the roads together on one errand or another. His talk was always the same, the thought of the preacher colored his whole year. He could [290] forget to speak of his farm, forget the meagreness of his life but not the preacher.
One afternoon he and Jessie walked on a footpath that led to where ihe preacher had lived. Jessie saw a small hut made of boulders and inside timbers lined with dingy plaster. A little farther off there was a large mound of earth where he stood to preach. It was sunken on one side from the winter storms. It all seemed dreary in the leafless sun, stark and useless, yet for Ira it was a prized place. He stood there thinking. His sinewy arms hung down and his work clothes flapped against him with the wind.
«In summer it’s not so bleak,» he said. Now the fallow light of spring blanched the air... empty... empty... until every twig was black, every sight vacant.
«He must be a queer man or a great preacher to live like this,» Jessie mused. «Couldn’t he ask for a bed in a farm house?»
«He never speaks to anyone,» said Ira. «People are half afraid of him. If he walks the roads in daytime and stops at a door they know who it is and give him a plateful, but they never ask questions. His face is too strict — we are uncertain about him.» Ira stood spellbound, brooding. His two dogs were restless about his feet, ready to run. « We’ll know it the first night he comes in the summer —» The remoteness, the silence could easily wake up to a voice that had something hypnotic in it. Suddenly Ira wanted to go as if he would get away quickly from some spell. His dogs leaped and dashed out of sight in an instant, making the woods ring with their sharp barks.
«You’re too heady about it» Jessie told him bluntly as they walked with the high oaks over them.
«You’ll be the same if he comes.» She had never seen Ira so moved.
Jessie had few idle moments in her hurry to get the farm started but in the leisure of evening new thoughts were quick and strange. A man she had never seen made a space for himself. The months she had been home seemed to stretch behind her into a forgotten time. All that had gone before when she lived in the grind of a factory or the interval of hope and love with Jim was dimming. She was gayer, vigor-[291]ous, ready for heavy tasks. She felt safe and easy in her father’s love. And for him a time of plenty, rich in stores, rich in her company, began.
August covered the fields with a blight of heat. Each farm was busy with its harvest; the great wheel of the year was turning on its last rounds.
In the midst of this hurry a word was passed, whispered over the kitchen tables. The preacher was back and it was like a festival in their minds. Women felt an undue joyousness that leaped into an unknown beauty for them. Suddenly they were tired of their tasks, tired of the same chores over and over and remembered the cool branches which had arched over them and the breeze in the dark after the day’s heat.
Jessie talked to her father that night as she set the supper dishes. What did he think? What did he recall from the year before?
He was impatient with her. «What can I remember? I never went. I only know what Ira told me. He talks of nothing else. He’s a fanatic, stirring things up... You’d better wait... better stay at home.» Some vague sense that he would lose if she went worried him. «It’s only the women who get so mixed up, so rambunctious — » He was scornful of both Ira and the women because he was afraid.
Just then Jessie looked out the window and saw Ira coming in the gate. «Yes,» she called to him, «I’m ready, Ira. No need to come in —»
He was excited, almost peevish, blaming her, blaming someone for his own agitation. He was sure that she would be disappointed and think it all fantastic. But he need not have been; preachers have always wandered and gathered people around them and held revivals in the country. She had heard of them many times, in this section or that word had been passed about them.
As they walked along Ira confided in her. «I listened to him many times. He somehow brings a freedom, a relief... he talks of saving... I want that —» To be saved, to be sure of what was to come, to be positive as a rock, that was peace. Heaven and Hell and all the other words worn thin, revolved in Ira’s mind. He told Jessie softly as a secret confession, «I [292] could go with him... be his disciple... leave what I have here for what he teaches... if I were sure.»
Jessie took a small glance at his face. «You’re a queer farmer... you’re alone too much.» And she thought of his days crowded with dull tasks, no family, no purpose, just the same repeated day over and over, the sun, the dark, empty and dull again and again.
«Yes, I could go easily,» Ira repeated. Then his face lost its brightness. «But he wouldn’t want me. What he talks about isn’t in me, faith, and a blind giving. All I want to do is to listen. His words carry me along...»
They entered the dim path off the road and could hear a rustling in the leaves dried with summer and further on the sound of a stacatto voice. Ira quickened his step. He seemed to forget Jessie. He was hurrying forward singly and easily. He was alone again.
—
Only a little crowd was there. That surprised Jessie. She had seen that many people on a street corner in the city. About twenty people stood close together in one group, ill at ease, expectant, not touching or moving, but deeply intent on a face and a voice.
The preacher looked very tall standing before them on the square mound of trodden earth and rock. All his clothes were black and old, almost threadbare and his hands raised in wide sweeping gestures. His talk was full of words like «mercy,» «hereafter» and «salvation,» which mean so much to everyone but are not fully understood.
When they grew tired with a feeling of emptiness the women sat in twos and threes on the ground. For a long time he talked on, held them, exhorted them. He told them that prayer should be consciously in their lives, that prayer and asking should be natural. «I know your mountain. I’ve been here before. The things you really want, the fertile seed, the rain, the harvest, are controlled and cared about. Ask... ask. Listen to me,» and he looked into the face nearest to him. «When you go into the cow barns or the coops smelling of animals, teeming with life, pray well. You will feel blessed and safe... When you have the one thing that counts it doesn’t [293] matter where you are or what your hands are doing. You will suddenly come to a peace you had forgotten. You are farm people, busy yet lonely; the deep quiet and remoteness you have give you many hours to yourselves.» He gave them the comfort they needed, joined them to a practice of thinking of goodness. «It is your peace,» he said. It was like a new kind of light shining over them.
Jessie was stirred. She had thought his preaching would be bombastic or ranting, had thought he would be different, a fanatic, a run-down itinerant hailing from nowhere, moving on from one mixed-up sermon to the next, from one forest to another over the countryside.
But he was not. He seemed to mould with his words a great quiet in the center of their minds, took them easily into the order where he lived himself and showed the way their hours should be spent. No one had ever talked to them with such intensity. Ira was right in all he had told her. The tiny irksome puzzles in their days were unwound and straightened; serenity was easy, at hand, different from before.
If the preacher had been tawdry, unctious or railing Jessie would have laughed and joked with Ira as they walked back in the midnight. «I’ll come again,» she said quietly. «I’ll listen to him.» Then suddenly as though a sluice was opened in her deepest thoughts: she said, «Ira, Ira, what is it that is so strange... so powerful... why is it that he can make me feel so deeply?»
Ira’s voice was tight in his throat. Then he made a banal excuse to cover his own perplexity. «Perhaps it’s only the night and the closeness.» They stood there in the heat with the dried fragrance of the roadweeds stirring around them making another whisper besides their talk. «He is no fake, no ordinary man. I don’t know any more than you do what it is that draws us so urgently to him.» They stood close together and Ira put out his hand gently and laid it on her arm, drew her toward him, kissed her timidly and strangely, not the kiss of a lover, not with a vital passion underneath, but afraid and surprised at himself.
Jessie smiled at him. «You are good,» she said. Her hand was gentle on his face and she drew his mouth to hers again and again and the comfort of it was for both of them. It was a [294] different night and a different sweetness than either had thought of. Her white blouse shone in the hot moonless dark as they walked on.
—
The hard farm work took up all her days and the welcome dusk spread in the sky after the heat and the labor. Gradually her father noticed a difference in her. He saw a new hurry in all her tasks. She finished her chores neatly and exactly so the hours would shorten. He watched her without looking. Age made him knowing and conscious about her. Nothing was yet caught into words between them.
What seemed fresh and joyous to her when she left abruptly each night to go to the meeting place only made anxiety for him. It seemed as if some deep sadness was coming toward him. Would she be hurt again? Would he be left alone? The simple uncomplicated days he wanted could fade in a week. Now in his age rest and drifting in sleep was all that was left. He was too old to think things out, to weed his thoughts. How dim it all was, secret and twisted! A change can happen in five minutes or in a few words spoken indistinctly so that the mind has to search for the meaning which for others is so rushing and clear.
Jessie was at the top of her life. Her health glowed, her step was wide and sure, her arms raised easily to the heavy tasks about the farm. All had started again vigorously. Fields and animals and harvest. The land should not go back now, should not be let return to its former ruin. Ruin was outside the plan they had talked of so blithely between them. But what could prevent it? Only his will struggling against it, talking against it, the frail repeated wishes of a man so old he was not able to give a hand to a task or a word that anyone would pay much heed to. Drift... drift... sleep and take cover... dream and return into the dream again.
—
Jessie did not wait for Ira to stop after her. She even avoided his company if she could. When evening came each day she went out the kitchen door quietly and cut across the first field in back of the house to a glen which farther on [295] skirted a stream and was lost to sight of the top of the road. As a child she had delighted in this place. It was her own, a special domain. Roaming there close to the birds, the insects and the twirling leaves, knowing them, touching them, she passed her idle child-hours. This path had been full of wonder and glowing light and tiny, moving things.
Now she lingered on the same path each night as she went to the meeting place. She had never spoken to the preacher; she stood as one of the crowd which listened to him and took his words. He entered so easily into their lives that they thought he must have lived like them at one time; they felt it for he knew the farmer’s hours and tasks well. But he escaped them. A preacher was an impersonal, separate being. When he finished he quickly walked away as he always did and in a single moment was gone from their sight. Still thinking, still keeping what they had heard near and close for an hour they took different paths.
—
As she walked in the glen the next night waiting until it grew time to go on she heard a step almost beside her. A wagon road ran along one side and someone was walking there. She looked through the leaves, peered the short distance and saw the black figure she had been thinking of. At once she climbed lightly on to the road and he was startled, half frightened, staring at her with wild eyes. When she got near enough she could see how stark he was in his poor clothes. His white lips were faintly moving as though he were reluctant to speak but must speak. His hair was cut so close that the scalp showed. His hands were long and fine, not work hands, not the hands of a farmer. Everything about him seemed tense and strange, almost frightening.
Then he recognized her. «Oh, it’s you,» he said. He twisted his lips into a half smile. «I’ve been for something to eat,» he said, now he was sure of himself and the fear was gone. «Your neighbors know me —»
«Yes. We want to know you. You could come to us for a meal once in a while.»
«I’ll remember,» he said and he looked past the glen and up the long field to the house. «I went to the others when I was here last year.»
[296]
He was not distant as she thought he would be. Her own breath came slower. Her hands grew quiet. «I did not see you last year, did I?»
«I was in Stroudsburg.» She could not tell him any more than that. What had happened to her seemed passed, distant.
«Now you are taking care of your father,» he said kindly.
He knew about her. Who told him? How did he find out? They were walking together stiffly as new friends walk and they were alive to each other.
«I am never sure,» he said, «Whether I make a good sermon or not.» He was humble enough to be doubtful. «I always hope, yet I cannot ask questions except of someone I meet like you and there are not many I meet —»
Jessie thought a moment. «The women here are kinder than they were,» she said slowly, «more willing to help each other — I know every one of them.» She suddenly felt gay, her voice was stringent, full of laughter.
«You are a splendid one to talk to, to help me with my wavering. It’s always a question I put to myself. I ask myself many times a night.» Then he explained. «When I finish talking to whoever comes to hear me I go off quickly because I’m not free of the spell of my own preaching. I am still sweating and trembling with the effort. Even another word would upset me. Somehow I am driven to speak, to shout, to convince people. I hope you can understand that —» He was anxious to have her help, to make a dim pact with her. «Listen to me,» he laid his long fingers on her arm — «I wish I could take you into what I feel so intensely yet I know that each one must find his peace for himself. A great oneness draws us, covers us and is secure...» Then he realized his seriousness and made a joke. «I could go on like this,» he said, «But if I preach to you now you won’t come to the sermon — for sermon it is!»
He laughed gently but she felt that he had taken her into his confidence. Chance had touched them, the chance of meeting, the chance of wishing. A new excitement ran in their minds in a steady flood.
He told her he trusted completely in his own power. He was enough of a mystic for that. He stood before them, waited and gathered the signs that appeared that they heard him. [297] Even his humility was a sort of a pride. He had longed to ask someone and now here was a listener ready to answer, a woman knowing her neighbors, knowing the talk in the kitchens.
She seemed to be on the brink of telling him other things about herself but the path to the meeting place was already before them and in a moment or two the crowd of farm people standing there waiting. No one noticed that they had come together for the preacher walked ahead and Jessie followed in silence and with a lazy air.
As he stood ready to preach she looked intently at him. He changed suddenly, seemed wrought up and strange as though they had never spoken to each other in calmness or been near each other walking on a path. She knew nothing about him, absolutely nothing. The only thing she was sure of was that before the autumn set in she would find him gone. He wanted nothing from anyone, no touch, no drawing near. His great magnetism caught her up, the almost hypnotic desire to be near him was insistent. Yet the next moment she was sure he was too remote, too sufficient to himself to ever need her.
—
A different time came for her. New thoughts, dim plans farmed. «Let me think...» she would murmur to herself standing at the kitchen door, looking at nothing with her hand on her mouth.
«What did you say?» her father asked crossly. «Don’t mumble to yourself like that...» What ailed her? She answered briefly as though commonplace words disturbed her and left him sitting there. He did not even turn on the light when it grew dark. Her strangeness he thought was due to her great strength and health. She could not be as quiet as he was and sit there with him night after night. That was natural. She was not eighty years old. He hated the strain and the silence that was between them for he was finished with plans or any kind of struggle.
Ira tried to tell him what was so plain in his own thoughts. But his hesitant words lessened, became confused and weak in the old man’s apathy.
«I know... I know,» John answered to everything Ira said. «I know —» when he did not know at all.
[298]
The very depth of his feeling for Jessie made Ira tell on her. «She sits before the preacher, always by herself and wants no one near her. I watch her face every night and can see what’s happening. What does she expect? A man like that does not think of women. He actually runs from them, in a moment he is gone before they can speak to him. What way is that?» Ira paused to look closely at John. «Well, I’ll tell you what way it is... he is not here to make friends. He talks, he teaches but does not notice what happens in front of his eyes. Perhaps he is really a holy man and sees something beyond our seeing... Strange, though, that he does with so little. I don’t know what to make of it myself...» Ira’s voice sank. John was watching some birds in a field, pretending not to hear. Then Ira said, «He will be gone in a few weeks and no one knows where.» Suddenly Ira threw back his head and laughed at some secret of his own.
John was startled at that laugh but would not ask about it. In a flash he recalled Jessie standing in the level sun of late afternoon with a look of trance on her face. What was it she saw or wanted. Some promise? Some fulfillment? One question crashed in John’s mind and tightened in his heart. Would she leave him? She must not go away again. His thought of the years he had been dependent on Cora sickened him. How could his old life stand it? How could he take from Bert and Cora the meagreness they handed out with an air of charity? And the worst question at this moment was not for himself but for Jessie. What did she know about this preacher? What assurance did she have or want? She had none, none from what Ira told him, none from her own confusion.
He looked past Ira to the August fields. Dry winds rustled the stalks, whitened the grass. Was he helpless with a harvest outside his door? He got up slowly and went into the yard in his faded clothes and took the feed pans to the animals. She had forgotten them.
A deep anger rose in Ira as he watched the old man, an anger against Jessie and what she had caused.
His own life was mixed up in it too.
[299]
Each nightfall Jessie went to the exact spot where she had met the preacher on the wagon road. She listened and waited not making a sound. But he never came. The meeting with him had been so easy and natural that she could not believe that there would not be another. She had little to go on, only her own longing. Later in the night as he preached she thought he looked directly at her. The shadows under the trees gathered and faded as he moved and she was not sure. The simple encounter they had had became frail and indistinct.
Once she saw Bert and Cora standing in the crowd. Their blank faces were expressionless and they were not paying attention to the preacher but to her. What had they heard? The slightest talk flies on the upland farms and it was plain that they had come to see if there was anything in it. Jessie knew how righteous her neighbors were, how perfect in their country respectability. Let them be. A surge of defiance engulfed her and she looked blankly back at Bert and his wife. With that look a new suffering began for her as swiftly as a page is turned. All at once not Bert, not Cora, nor her father could counsel her now. Alien to all, a quick struggle and pain rose in her. From that moment she knew well what was in her heart.
—
Ira came about the harvest. He told her he had spoken to two men at the store who would get the hay in for her. The potatoes and roots in the truck garden Ira would help her with that task himself. He stood talking to her near the barn door, looking inside with the eyes of a farmer. «We won’t have to patch it this year,» he said. «It’s tight enough for the winter. We’ll cut the hay in a day and stack it later in the week.» He was planning ahead for her, worrying about her, trying to keep her close in his country round. Every year was alike to him, the same tasks, the same secure, easy order.
«When can the helpers come?»
«Tomorrow or the next day.»
«Bring them along then —»
Ira felt the underhurry in her words.
[300]
Cora stood at the back door and her little questions one after the other filled the kitchen.
«I haven’t time now,» said Jessie and she took down a pail rattling it off its hook and walked out through the yard.
«She’s going for berries,» said John softly not looking at Cora. «She’s quiet now-a-days —»
«Quiet! But what’s under the quiet?» Cora’s voice was high pitched and rasped at him.
«Do you know? Does anyone know?» He was sarcastic and bitter with her. What business was it of hers?
Cora went home without any gossip confirmed. John would tell her nothing, would not say if the preacher came to eat with them or what happened. She simply had to watch all the closer and get Bert to tell her what he heard at the store down the hill. There were always bits of news flying around, if not about Jessie then about some other woman. Cora did not mind who it was as long as she had a rumor to enliven her day, to roll about in her head.
Who knew Jessie or about her love? No one. Love runs in the tractless mind leaping ahead or stilled and its surging drive is plain and insistent and reason holds desire like a flower at arm’s length, yet draws it ever closer, cherishes it, lets nothing outside touch it, lets full bloom heighten it, welcomes the night, the ease, even the passing as each change appears and the great circle is closed and the great wheel goes over. The poorest love is not trivial, common or cheap, the end not clouded but always plain. Jessie had seen a man, full of mystery, unwilling to be touched by a word or a gesture, passionately wanting to stand alone and yet she grasped widely, stretched her arms wide and her fingers closed on nothing and the days were still.
Early one morning the two men and Ira rode the reaper into the yard. Jessie gave them coffee and a big slice of her bread by the kitchen door. The men were smiling and fresh looking, strong and brown in thin clean clothes. Cool sweetscented air filled the country-side. This harvest was what she had planned for. They all walked to the wide field of grass running in the breeze and John watched them with his old eyes and later listened for the clack of the reaper.
In the afternoon when it was very hot Jessie went back [301] to the house. She saw that the haying could be finished on time. As she passed the barn she opened the doors wide to let the sun in. She was suddenly weary. She saw her father on the back porch and said to him, «I’ll go and sit somewhere and try to get cool.» Every day she went to the glen; that was her place of rest. The preacher had passed there once and would again. It seemed that all that had happened in that one encounter, so slight and natural, without a plan, without any hoping, was so faint now that it had taken place only in her own mind.
As she walked down the hill through the old grass she thought she saw something further on not always in the dappled shade, a blackness more deep and somber than any shadow. It was the preacher standing with his back to her. She took a few quick steps to him and he began talking to her at once and telling her the reason he had come. He was leaving the mountain for this year.
«But going where? Where?» she asked. The intensity of her face made him pause.
«I felt that you were the one who was interested the most in what I tried to say. You listened the best... I could see it. Next year I’ll return and you’ll be a friend waiting... a friend ready to help me again.» His words faltered. «There is nothing personal in this you understand —»
«Oh, but there is! A year is a long time. Why do you tell me this if you don’t want me to know where you are going?» She felt the finality, the puzzle. «I must know,» she said. Her words were quick, anxious.
«No, no one has to know, parting is always final — breaking what is to be broken. You don’t understand now. You will later when you think about it. It’s better to be positive and simple about such a thing. If I’m able, I’ll return — that’s all.»
She looked at him with longing. «Why did you come to the glen? Why did you want to talk to me, me of all the people you’ve seen?» He must be able to tell by her face what was underneath these questions.
«I hoped you were a friend. Am I to find out you aren’t?» He told her suddenly, painfully that it was the first time he was drawn to anyone in a long while. Then fearing he had [302] already said too much he became diffident, confused by words. «Actually I don’t know why I came tonight —»
She would not let him off. «Yes you do. You think about me. You can’t help yourself because I believe in you... Be real for me —» She was pleading. «Talking to us as you do in the half dark of the woods with never a personal word to anyone makes people curious. You must know what you have come to mean to me — me above all the others — you can see that plainly, can’t you?»
He saw nothing. He had not expected emotion or pleading. Panic filled him. What could he do but walk away? It was all hateful to him, hateful. A quiet alarm, dread and fear took hold of him and he turned to leave.
She almost whispered, «Tell me what to do... teach me, you who teach so many...» She had reached him with the one right word. To teach, to mould, to save, that was his mission. «Sit down,» he said. He stood beside her and began to talk slowly. All he believed, all the good he had hoped to do welled up in him. He saw in her another soul struggling, forlorn at this moment and began to question her.
All her former life opened year after year; she told him how bitterly she had worked, told him about loneliness, about the small, dim room where she lived in the woman’s home, told him about the meagreness, the dullness, dirt, sweepings, how dreary the mornings were and what happened in the night, night, how she had finally thought after she went to live with Jim Morris[on] that she had found a way with some part of sweetness in it, had waited patiently for Jim to marry her, had found the letter — the dreadful letter — and resolved over and over for as much as a month to leave Jim.
«You did right,» he said softly.
Her lips moved slowly. She did not look up nor down but felt safe in the quiet calmness of the confession pouring from her and he understood the effort of revealing so much.
Each occurrence as he heard it was weighed by him, the good against the bad. Sorrow was in his face that anyone had to tell him such things, yet they were common everyday facts and he knew the endings before she revealed them, knew the man, the letter, the deserted woman, all, all, over and over, knew the nothingness easily completed. It was no less heavy [303] for her to tell it than for him to hear it. «Bear it,» he said. «This is the weight everyone must carry, the burned-in mistakes... years can go over those mistakes yet they cannot be covered... the regrets are deep and still hurting. But you are free now, you can forget them all.» He was exulted. His face had a look of triumph.
She was aghast for he had not understood why she was telling him, why she was revealing what he need never have known. How much easier it would have been for her to begin as a fresh country woman leaving all the past out! Her love for him, so evident, so shining, had not been plain enough, had fallen short, was disregarded in his stubborn blindness.
The love she felt strained and reached for him. She sat there even wanting to prolong the numbness of the moment if nothing else... Silence passes slowly. He could be nothing more than he was, nothing... nothing to her. She was suddenly sure of it.
It was then through the leaves and the shadows that Ira saw them.
—
He had come from the haying field in late afternoon while the two men were cutting the last hay. It was only a small field easily finished but it was enough for Jessie’s stock for the winter.
At the house her father sat in the doorway with his hand folded over his cane.
«Where’s Jessie?»
«She’s not here,» said John. «I saw her walking the path to Bert’s.» He had woken out of a dream as he heard her go. «She wanted to get the money he owed her.»
Ira left at once. He would have to have the money to pay the two men although he could do it tomorrow. Ira cut across the field on the foot path to the house. «Is Jessie here?» he asked Cora standing at the screen door of the kitchen. She had heard his step coming in the last of the hot sun.
Cora’s eyes widened. He could only have come from John’s on that path. «She’s not lost, is she?» she asked slyly and cynically.
«I need the money to pay the men,» said Ira shortly. He wanted to tell her as little as he could.
[304]
Cora went over to a shelf where she kept Jessie’s egg money in a crock. She has a tongue like an adder he thought.
«I actually don’t know where she’s gone,» said Ira.
«Maybe for berries.» It was the first thing he could think of.
«Berries in haying time!» Cora knew all the upset of harvest.
«I must get back to the men,» said Ira crossly.
Cora smiled, a squeezed-out smile, «I knew you were haying over there. The breeze smelled so rich —» He was sure she knew every step on the mountain.
He left her and went back and paid the men in the barn. Then he walked the road as if he were going to his own house, silent and cranky. A fallow field lay on one side and he cut across it. No one was around. He knew Cora was right. It was not like a farm woman to go off in the afternoon, to disappear from her ordinary round of tasks. The deep hot silence flowed about him and the heavy sun made his steps slow.
He was really not looking for her. Where could he look? No, he was walking alone thinking of her with a vague longing, a vague want to protect her. He would have done anything to help her. He kept thinking of the night they had kissed on the road. It always came back to him, came down slowly, shutting out all other thoughts. Her body felt strong against him and her lips in their soft kiss were without passion he knew, without any other feeling than friendliness. His own longing made more of them.
Farther on the glen started to slope down under his step and he saw the familiar trees which ran along the brook. There was not a foot of ground on the farms that he did not know or who owned them or where he could cross. It was his homeland and he had never been in any other. He thought he would go on until he came to the stirring trees. Deliberate, almost with the rhythm of sleep his step flattened out the deep grass.
—
He saw them at once, shadowed and black, black among the low branches and moving leaves and knew who they were. Jessie was sitting leaning on her arms and the preacher was [305] standing beside her. Two or three steps divided Ira from them. He stilled his whole body for he wanted to catch what they were saying and it was so important to him that he could not turn away. What they were deciding would affect him as much as them.
They seemed at some climax, poised for some word, a gesture that would be the finish or a beginning. Well, let it come, the love, the encounter. Perhaps what he witnessed in the next moment would settle his own life, settle his own days and his years ahead, plainly. He was completely dismayed at this moment that might defeat him. He was going to cry out but he remained silent; his eyes saw them and his ears heard the two or three more words that were spoken. They were almost foolish words, full of ending and failure. A deep pause was between them. Ira saw Jessie throw herself back on the ground and turn until her face and her sobs were pressed into the grass. The man was leaving, slowly at first, then rushing up the bank to the road in two giant steps. How long does it take a man to walk away out of sight? The footfall and the shadow are brief, even the echo receding into nothingness.
Ira was caught and clamped in his own fright. How intruding and awkward to go to Jessie lying under the tree! After a minute he felt he must stop her rhythmic sobbing. When she heard the step she sat up quickly for she thought it was the man who just left who was coming back for her. But it was Ira... his bronze face stiff with the agony of all he knew. She wondered dimly how it was that he was there. And the moment of her love now fading so rapidly, had he seen it?
His face told her. He moved beside her with his mouth trembling, questions and reasons were useless and they sat together. At once that other night came back to her mind when they were close together before and she was sure the identical pain was spreading in this hour for Ira as well as for her and that two would feel it, suffer it, but singly and bitterly, each for his own hurt. She looked into the tree above her and it seemed as she stared upward that this was the darkest leaf of her whole life-tree, the senses’ darkest leaf, least understood, least accounted for in that great tree which [306] had sprung up fraily, grown tall, blossomed and now stood hearty and strong in its maturity.
—
The light faded. They would have to go back or Cora would have the whole mountain running to find them and there would be gossip. The glen was known to all and they would certainly look here first. It had always been the place where Jessie went when she wanted the cool or a sleep in the shade in summer afternoons. To the mountain people she was certainly an odd person and independent, not like a farm woman at all.
As they reached the house together Ira called out loudly to John sitting behind the kitchen door. «I found her —» he called. «Here she is!» Happiness was rising in him. His voice was clear and buoyant.
He stayed a while awkward and nervous with the emotion he had been through and he got in the way trying to help Jessie with the supper. Her face was dull and swollen and her fingers as stiff as twigs around the plates and forks she laid on the table. She did not ask Ira to stay, could not bring herself to speak or smile. Hope and a swift doubt swung back and forth in Ira’s thoughts and made him reluctant to go.
From that time on her father watched her suffer, sat there silently and looked at her and looked too at the last great sun of the year dry up the fields and he thought that Jessie was a grown woman without a husband, without a child or any fulfillment. It was natural that one love should follow another quickly, almost violently. The old remember their own lives well no matter how dimming and vague and lost. It suddenly became clear to him how one episode of love, how one time of love fashions another. He knew well the reaches and the depths the emotions can take and he could do nothing to soothe her.
Ira never told him what he had seen the evening he had gone after Jessie but once in a while the words so loud and positive that Ira had used as he walked across the yard beside her came back to John and startled his quiet with their force and their hope — «I found her —» Ira had called to him «I found her —.»

passages : underlined, marked, and (occasional) comments

His own usefulness was gone now
2

Too stilled in his thoughts, too cryptic with age
11

Every one was not alike; what made one person ambitious and active stilled another.
16

Then he drew a few lines to indicate the streets and it looked like the branch of a tree with names standing out in the twigs.
34

There was nothing for John to do but to turn his head and look out the window. New winds fall and sweep the little dust outside and his black gaze meets the whole world. Time breaks in two...
aside — present tense breaks in
50

until every twig was black, every sight vacant
104

Nothing was yet caught into words between them.
128

all that was left. He was too old to think things out, to weed his thoughts
129

She looked through the leaves, peered the short distance and saw the black figure she had been thinking of.
133

to help me with my wavering. It’s always a question
143

With that look a new suffering began for her as swiftly as a page is turned.
158

runs in the tractless mind leaping ahead or stilled and its surging drive
aside — first of two italicized passages in the story
170

saw something further on not always in the dappled shade, a blackness more deep and somber than any shadow. It was the preacher standing
173

the whole passage a confession (in the Roman Catholic, sacramental sense)
printed here, Jim “Morris” (Morrison in earlier passages)
183

How long does it take a man to walk away out of sight?
207

that this was the darkest leaf of her whole life-tree, the senses’ darkest leaf, least understood, least accounted for
aside — second of two italicized passages
209

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