Between the Flowers: A Novel

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  She followed him and was meekly still while he lighted the lantern and held it up to her face. "Pat your hair a little straighter, Delph. An' now git to milkin', but fer God sakes don't let him see yer eyes."

  She began the milking of Flossie, but the dehorned Jersey was more unruly than common, tossing her head, wasting her bran from the feed box, moving about the stable, and at last kicking the milk bucket from Delph's unskillful hands. The racket brought Juber hurrying to the stable door. Delph sat on her heels and looked at the spilled milk, while Flossie stood in a corner and looked at Delph, then turned her great eyes on Juber and bawled in plaintive aggrievement.

  "I don't blame ye a bit," Juber said. "This girl's addled. Delph, in case you ever come to enough to recollect, Flossie's got a three-week-old calf she's been in th' habit a lettin' suck."

  "Oh," Delph said, and got up, but stopped and looked wildly at Juber when John's voice came thundering down the hall. "Juber, whatever have you got Delph at th' milkin' for anyhow? Can't you milk four cows?"

  Page 82

  "Th' rheumatism in my shoulder has got down into my hand," Juber answered, and went for Bessie's calf.

  Delph smoothed her hair, and thought of Juber's advice about her eyes. She saw John's shadow fall on the stable door, and the shadow covered her, and she knew he was standing in the door. "Delph?"

  "Yes."

  "Turn around an' look at me, Delph."

  She turned slowly with bent head and saw first his heavy boots laced with rawhide thongs. "Delph?"

  "Yes."

  "I reckin you know, if you've got any sense at all, th' answer I gave that fool oil man. He's been here, I reckin."

  "Hejust stopped."

  "I 'lowed as much." He bent his head and stepped through the stable door, and glowered down at her in the same troubled, uncomprehending way as he had used to do when she was a small thing racing home from school with tangled hair and torn stockings. "Delph, get this in your head. It's th' last time he'll stop. There's to be no more a this hangin' around th' barnor meetin' him in th' woodsif you have been up to such. Get that?"

  "Yes. ButUncle John he's not th' way you think. He's."

  He lifted his hand for silence. "You can't tell me a thing about himYou don't know anything. You couldn't.It's shameful leadin' a fool like that onmakin' him think God knows what."

  "I never thought of leadin' him on."

  "You never think of anything. Th' night you run away to that dance I reckin you wasn't thinkin' what a scandal you'd cause an' hurt your Aunt Fronie's feelin's. Always runnin' after somethin'an' this'ull might nigh be th' death a her. She's prayin' in th' parlor now." He turned on his heel, and stalked away, saying over his shoulder, "Now get on back to th' house where you belongan' stay there."

  She walked sedately down the barn hall, but once free of John's eyes, and under cover of the deepening darkness, she whirled twice on her toes, smiled on a startled shoat, and then ran humming to the back kitchen door. There, she stopped a time and listened to Fronie who had given off praying in the parlor for crying in the kitchen.

  Page 83

  Delph heard her sobs and sighs as she unburdened herself to Nance. "I've tried to raise her more careful like than I would a girl a my own, bring her up to be a good Christian woman that'll never give reason for whisperin' behind her back, an' look at th' thanks I get.Meetin' a good for nothin' oil man in th' woodsan' her not a knowin' one thing on God's earth about himhis people could all be idiots or eat up with bad diseases oroh, Lord, Lord." And Fronie burst into loud weeping.

  Delph listened and pitied her. She had so much and Fronie had so littlebut then no woman on earth had as much as she had. She dreamed a moment of Marsh his eyes and his hair, and his hard square hands, gentle when they touched her, and the strong set of his shoulders, andFronie was flinging open the door and calling, "Delph-i-i-ne," in a ringing, quavering voice.

  She answered, and walked into the kitchen with red cheeks and lowered eyes. She stood silent with bowed head under the tongue lashing that Fronie gave her, and such was its completeness that even Fronie grew tired and left off quarreling. And at supper she treated Delph with unaccustomed tenderness when she saw that her eyes were bright as if filled with tears, and that though she put food on her plate she ate nothing. Juber smiled to himself and marveled that a woman old as Fronie could so mistake the effects of love for a feeling of guilt and shame. He'd venture to guess that Delph remembered not one word of what her aunt had said.

  He was thankful when, next day, the weather continuing cold, Fronie decided to have an early hog killing, and ordered two fat barrows killed. The extra work of grinding sausage meat and rendering lard kept Fronie and Nance so busy that they had little time for watching Delph, who sat mostly in her own room smiling at the fire, or spent long minutes on the high knoll on pretext of hunting the cows. He wondered why she stood there, when word had come by John from Mrs. Crouch that Marsh had left the country the day after he asked for Delph.

  In spite of hog killing, logging, wood getting, and corn gathering, Juber found time for a daily ride to the post office. There, he would stand a time by the stove warming his hands, and passing the time of day with any who happened to be in the store. Mrs. Crouch would come to inquire of the health of the Costello family, and when he

  Page 84

  had talked with her a time he would ask in an off hand way, ''I don't reckin there's any mail,'' and she would answer with a great rolling up of her eyes, "Pshaw, Juber, you know that ever since that fool oil man asked for Delph, John's been here waitin' when th' mail comes in. He took all Costello's mail."

  And Juber would say, "But law, Permelie, you're so careless like you could overlook a letter." Mrs. Crouch would smooth her apron, and answer with a forbearing sigh, "Well, Juber, none of us is perfect. I'm not sayin' I couldn't overlook a bit a mail, but I'm most certain I didn't today."

  Juber would warm again, and maybe talk a time before he went away. He would ride slowly home with his head hunched between his shoulders, and forgetting to play the French harp he carried for company. He would ride into the barn lot and on through the barn hall. In spite of John's command, Delph would most always be waiting there. She would look at him and he at her. The eagerness that flamed in her eyes would waver and fade, then flare with a sudden quiver of hope when he opened his mouth to speak. "There wasn't anything yet, DelphBut he'll write, never fear. He won't fergit ye."

  Juber would watch her as she walked away. There was something too meekly patient in her shoulders, something about the way she carried her head that made her seem a woman grown with a woman's troubles; not the girl who had run away to a dance and laughed at her uncle's scolding.

  Fronie scolded still, nagged over little things, such as the hours of foolishly painstaking work Delph had put into the blue woolen dress, trimmed on the cuffs and the shoulders with bright red embroidery. "A body 'ud think it was a weddin' dress th' way you've worked on it," she said one afternoon when the dress was finished except for buttons.

  Delph smiled at the dress, and gently pulled a bit of lint from one bright shoulder. "I'd have to have a man, an' anyhow who'd wear a bright blue dress embroidered with red to a weddin'?" she said, and got up and stood before the mirror and held the dress up to her shoulders.

  Nance stood behind her and looked into the mirror, too. "Lord, but that becomes you to a fare ye well. It makes your eyes fair shine, an' your hair shine, too. You know you're pretty, Delph, prettier than you used to be. Your eyes somehow. They make me think of th'

  Page 85

  angels lookin' into th' promised landrecollect that sermon Brother Eli Fitzgerald preached once up here a couple a yers backwell, that's th' way you look."

  "Such talk, Nance," Fronie said, and made a clucking noise with her tongue. "Dorie Dodson an' some may hold by Brother Eli's milk an' water doctrine, but I never couldAn' anyhow it wasn't th' angels that looked into th' promised land. What would a angel need with th' promised land. You'll have u
s all thinkin' Delph's goin' to die or somethin'."

  "That's good talk. It 'ud please Brother Eli, I know. Mebbe Delph here has turned over a new leaf an' died to th' world of sin."

  "She's flesh an' blood an' so can't die to sin till her spirit leaves her body," Fronie said with the finality proper to a deacon's wife and went downstairs.

  "Delph," Nance whispered when Fronie had gone, "if'n you'd kind awell, I mean humor herbeg her a littlean' make her think she's big it, stead a standin' off stiff necked an' stubborn as a mule, you'd get more a what you want. They're talkin' it over, an' I think they'll mebbe let you go to school after Christmasif you do right."

  Delph lifted her chin. "I won't get down on my knees an' beg like a slave for somethin' that's my due."

  "You'd ought to learn to beg, Delph. It's somethin' a heap a women have to do a sight of before they die," Nance said, and sighed a bit over the dress as she carried it to the kitchen to press it.

  The dress hung new and ready pressed in Delph's black walnut wardrobe for several days, and still Juber brought no word. One day when she had returned from a stolen meeting with Juber after his trip to the post office, Fronie looked at her and said, "You're lookin' peaked, Delph, all eyes. Th' next time John goes to Town I'll have him get you some medicine." She lowered her voice discreetly and studied Delph with searching eyes. "I know there's nothin' ails you, maybe a little touch a female trouble. If you don't feel it now you will some daynever wearin' enough underclothes, an' goin' around half nakedwearin' silk stockin's an thin shoes to church when it ought to be high shoes an' wool."

  Delph looked at her aunt with an anger like a blindness in her eyes. "You're enough to make a woman hate her body, an'." She

  Page 86

  whirled away and went upstairs. She hated the sound of her voice quarreling with Fronie, when all that mattered was Marsh. She walked to the calendar and counted the days, slowly going with her finger from one square to the next. Twice she did it, and each time the days were the same; one more than they had been yesterday, one less than they would be tomorrow. Yesterday there had been twelve; tomorrow there would be fourteen crawled away since she had stood in the barn and promised Marsh she would marry him.

  She told herself she was not afraid, but that night she was wakeful with curious dreams. Fronie's eyes next day were kinder when they looked at her. Once, as they sat by the hearth tearing carpet strings, she said, "Delph, you ought to perk up a little. John's talkin' again a sendin' you to school."

  "I'm all right. I'm fine."

  "There's circles under your eyes. You eat hardly nothin' an' last night I heared you cryin' in your sleep."

  "I was dreamin', I guess.I dreamed of Old Azariah."

  "Lord, Delph, he's been dead nigh onto a hundred an' fifty years."

  "I saw him, though, th' way Granpa used to tell. He stood on th' Pilot Rock, an' all th' hills were covered with snow. I stood with him an' we looked an' looked an' couldn't see a bit a smoke."

  "How did he look?"

  "Just like he always did; thin an' tall with his eyes blue an' his beard black, an' his hair down to his shoulders. He had a long gun like them in th' attic. It was all so plain. I could see th' fringe on his huntin' shirt, but his cap I don't think was coon skin like granpa used to saymore like a fox with th' tail long an' wide down between his shoulders."

  Fronie shivered and looked into the fire. "Don't talk on that way. You'll have me seein' ghosts. Dreamin' a th' dead is a mighty bad sign.Did he talk or say anything?"

  Delph pondered. "Never a word that I can recollect. That was why I cried, I think. I thought he might be dead; he stood so stiff an' still, just starin' out over th' country."

  Fronie shuddered. "You ought to go for a walk, Delph. Visit somebody. John wouldn't mind. You can't allus set by th' fire like an old woman. You'll have people talkin' worse than if you run around too much."

  Page 87

  "I'll go down an' visit Hedricks one a these daysmebbe stay th' night," Delph said, and tore carpet strings with eyes that were blind for the red dyed cloth.

  She was tearing strings again when, two days later, she heard a mule's feet thud over the road, quicker than Juber usually came, but it was Juber. She heard his French harp, faint and shrill, like a lost breath of wind, but speaking clearly as if Juber had cried, "Delph, I've brought you some mail."

  Fronie listened too. "I wonder whatever is takin' Juber over th' country so much. He's gone off somewhere's ever' day for weeks."

  "Courtin' Permalie," Delph said, and added in slow careful words, "This room seems so stuffy likeI think I'll go for a little walknot far."

  Fronie nodded. "A breath of air would do you good."

  She rolled the red strings neatly about the ball, and glanced swiftly at Fronie but Fronie seemed to have noticed nothing. The French harp came with a louder, gayer cry, and she laid the ball in the basket by the hearth and said, "I think I'll go now."

  "Don't go without a coat, an' with nothin' on your head," Fronie reminded.

  She walked slowly into the kitchen, and took the first coat and cap she saw. She was careful to close the back door with no hasty banging. She was careful to walk slowly across the porch, but once she had reached the dead, soundless grass of the yard, she ran to the barnyard, and after one swift glance back at the house windows, she opened the barnyard gate and dashed down the road to Juber. "Easy, now, easy," he whispered, and looked toward the house. "You don't want them to see."

  She danced impatiently on her toes. "Give it to me, Juber. Give it to me. I'll go down in th' beech trees below th' road where they can't see."

  "Lord, Delph, it's a good thing Marsh can't see you now. He'd have th' upper hand for th' rest of his days," Juber told her as he pulled the letter from an inside pocket. Delph snatched it and ran down among the beech trees with no answering and no words of gratitude. Juber sat his mule a time, and stared at the trees that had swallowed her. He glanced down at his French harp, raised it to his mouth, then changed his mind. He wiped it carefully clean and dry

  Page 88

  on his jumper sleeve, then stowed it in his jumper pocket. "Another one's gone out frum th' hills," he said, and rode on to the barn, slowly, and with his chin dropped forward on his chest.

  He stabled the mule, and was gathering eggs when Delph came, running lightly on her toes, flinging her arms about his neck as she had used to do when she was a child. "Oh, Juber, I wish I could fly. He's got a job, Juber. That's why he was waitin' to let me know. He wanted to be certain, he said. He's all right. He's been stayin' at Dorie Dodson's. He has it all planned out to th' day an' th' hour how he'll meet me. His job's in South AmericaI never thought I'd live to go so far away. There'll be a man come with him to get me in a car. Oh, Juber, I can't believe it all."

  "You're chokin' my Adam's apple," Juber whispered. "You'd better look out. They might be somebody around a listenin'."

  "John's off huntin' quail. I've got to tell somebody. I wish I could see Mrs. Crouch. I can't go back to th' house an' be still by th' fire an' talk to Fronie about th' weather. I've got to do somethin'."

  "Well, it's a plain fact you can't hep me gether eggs. Look, you've put in a nest egg two months old."

  She smiled at him, but saw a thousand things instead of Juber. "It's th' strangest feelin', Juber. I don't think I'll ever want to eat or sleep again."

  Juber sighed and went to another hen's nest. "Fallin' in love's a lot like dyin', I reckin. No two people ever act th' same way. Lord, I'll allus recollect th' night that Fronie an' John come tellin' around that they was goin' to be married."

  "I guess they didn't laugh or seemwell, happy, even then."

  Juber spat at a corn cob. "God, no. There was a big revival on, an' John he'd been squirin' her to church right regular. You'd a thought it was a funeral. Fronie was no spring chicken anymore, but she went around a blushin' an' a castin' down her eyes, an' your granmaif you recollect it was th' winter after your granpa diedshe had 'em a settin' by her whi
le she read th' Bible over 'em an' they all prayed an' cried together."