Between the Flowers: A Novel

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  He nodded to that, and she, after another sidelong glance, continued, "Bad as that pasture looks to be, there's still good grazin' with nothin' done.Lord but it hurts to see a place mistreated soever year it washes worse."

  He shoved his hands into his pockets and spoke with his eyes

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  straight ahead. "Th' renter's house is in a bad way.Reckin it could he fixed?"

  "Pshaw, it's strong, th' roof's good, an' th' rails are sound. A good man handy with his handslike youcould fix it up with a underpinnin' an' porches in no time. Lots live in worse.Aye, but a body could raise fine clover hay up there above. Burn him a lime kiln and sweeten up the landsmoother an' better than some a my own."

  Marsh cleared his throat. "Looks like a big rich garden there by the barn."

  "But if somebody don't get to it one a these days that little spring branch will be th' ruination of it. It's a cuttin' a gully now. But it an' them gullies above could all be fixed with rock an' cedar brush an' grass sacks of dirt with sweet clover seed," Dorie said, and peeped at him from under her hat brim.

  "They'd better mix a little red top with their clover seed, an' put out some Bermuda grass sod. Nothin's so good for holdin' as Bermuda grass once it gets a start." He hesitated, and would not look at Dorie as he asked, "I wonder nowis that limestone any good for buildin'?"

  "Nothin' better. Makes good lime, too, an' a body could build with th' plain rock or break 'em up for strong cement. A workin' man stronglike youcould, with sand from th' river an' limestone from th' hill, make cement waterin' troughs an' put a cement floor in th' barn for might nigh nothin'."

  Marsh nodded and pulled harder at the fence while Dorie continued, "He'd have that brick house to rent an' help him along with cash. Elliot'ull want it for three or four more years anyhow. His wife's no hand for managin', a city woman not knowin' buttermilk from clabber. A man with a smart wife, a good sensible girllike Delph for examplewhy she could sell 'em enough milk an' butter an' eggs an' such to nearly keep her in pin money. An' when th' man that bought it was out a debt he could move to th' big house on th' hill if he wanted to. But, Lord, when th' corn's all in tassel, fourteen feet tall an' a blue black green, stalks big as your wrist like I've seen it thereI couldn't think of any place that a farmer'ud rather be."

  He turned abruptly away. "Where's Delph? I've not seen her since dinner."

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  ''Upstairs sewin' on her weddin' dress, I guess. Mebbe she'll get somethin' done with Katy off to school for a change, an' not drivin' her crazy with talk.''

  "She likes to hear Katy talk," he answered with the curiously gentle yet troubled smile that touched his mouth sometimes when he spoke of Delph.

  Dorie looked troubled, too, and fingered the fence as she said, "She's awful young, Marsh."

  "I knowhardly eighteen."

  "I don't mean that. Katy's thirteen, but in some ways Delph's younger than Katy. It's her raisin', I reckin."

  "She's been well brought up, I'd say," he answered somewhat sharply.

  Dorie nodded. "That's what I meantoo careful raisedkeep a new calf in a stable all winter, turn it out sudden like on a bright wild day in spring, it's like a addled thing."

  He tried to catch Dorie's glance, and failing in that, asked in a low voice, "What are you drivin' at, Dorie?"

  "Nothin'.Only when you're makin' your plans for South America you ought to be thinkin'onwell on Delph."

  He turned on her in an outburst of his weary perplexity. "God, Dorie, what have I been thinkin' on but Delphsincesince last summer you might say?"

  She looked over the river with her upper lip growing long and her eyes narrow. "Well, all I've got to say is, that your thinkin's brought you some mighty pretty plans. Aimin' to take her for a year an' a half or mebbe two to a place where you're none too happy to be goin' yourself, a place you know nothin about, but from th' price they're givin' you to come it must be hard to get men. Mebbe not a doctor within fifty miles, mebbe not a white woman for a neighbor, mebbe Delph's th' kind that can't stand th' climate, mebbe there'll be fever.When you talked to that man in Lexington did you tell him you aimed to bring a wife?"

  He shook his head guiltily and mumbled, "Other men take their wivessometimes." Then burst out in a louder voice, "Dorie, you know damn well I've thought a all thatan' morebut it's th' best payin' job I've ever hadwhy in two years I could mebbe save more than I have in th' last five. An' Delphshe's got her heart set so on goin'."

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  Dorie snorted. "How could she have her heart set on somethin' she knows nothin' about? Now, don't be mad, Marsh, I was never one for givin' advice or meddlin', but you an' Delph seem like my own. Recollect when you come to this country that first time, a green little driller hardly twenty years old. That was th' spring I learned that Sam wouldn't be backbut as a visitor. 'Peared like you come in his place, somehow. An' all this week I've been thinkin'; if I had a son an' he was marryin' a young tight-raised back country girl like Delph, why I've been thinkin' what I would do."

  "An' what would you do, Dorie?" he asked after a time of looking over the river.

  Dorie gave him a sidling glance. "Well, in th' first place I'd set myself dead against his goin' away, but if he would go in spite a mewhyI'd never let him take his wife. I'd keep her by me," she went on after a moment's study of his face. "She'd be a sight of company. Ever' day she stays she seems more like Rachel to me."

  "Rachel, I reckin, didn't care whether she stayed with her man or not."

  "She run away to marry him, but this is different. Delph'ull want to go with you, most likely cry an' beg. But, Lord, Marsh, many a woman's cried. A man's got to be sensible."

  Marsh's eyes darkened with remembering. "Dorie, you can't tell me anything about bein' sensibleat least not much. I've been that way most a my lifetoo damned sensible."

  "Well, it's a bad time to stop bein' that way now. It's sensible," she went on cautiously, "not stingy for a man wantin' money like you, to thinkan' rememberthat a lone man in th' oil fields can save a lot more money than a man with a wife."

  "I'd never leave her behind just for that," he answered with a sullen set to his chin.

  Dorie caught his arm. "Listen, Marsh," she begged, and waited until he had looked at her, then said, "You think I'm stingy an' hard with not much heart."

  He nodded. "You sound like it sometimes.You don't know, Dorie. I mean you couldn't know how high land comesto some. Workin' an' savin' then gettin' drunk an' gamblin an' spendin', or investin' an' losin' an' thinkin' ever' year. Hell, you married yours. You're not a manmarryin' an'."

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  She turned on him with bitter, understanding eyes. "Land? I can't know th' cost of land? I married my land? Listen, with this land I married a mana good man but no farmer, brought up for the law an' county politics. For sixteen years I stayed mostly in this house tied down with babies an' watched him run with fox hunters an' th' courthouse crowd an' drink himself to deathan' mortgage an' waste th' land. I never quarreled. It would ha done no good. When Katy was a month old an' Sam was sixteen they brought him in one mornin'November it wasI recollect th' river valley how blue it was in th' dawn. Drunk he was with his feet burned off. He'd dropped down dead drunk, an' th' fool with him was drunk enough to build a fire by his feet, an' then he laid down a little piece away an' went to sleep.

  "I had seven children under seventeen, six hundred acres of land mortgaged up to th' hilt, needin' fence, fertilizer, an' ever'thing I couldn't give it. He laid five months a dyin'mostly, I think, because he didn't want to live without his feet. An' while he was there dyin' do you think, do you think I could be there holdin' his hand? I was out seein' to things. I had it to do. It was in th' early twenties an' th' boom had got all th' farm hands north to Akron an' Detroit. Many's th' day I drove two mules in th' cultivator from daylight 'til dark, stoppin' just long enough to eat an' nurse Katy. Many's th' night that Sam an' Emma an' me would be up 'til midnight, rollin' out again at daylight, workin' to
get butter or sausage meat or somethin' up to sell next day.I've had a harder time than you'll ever have. You're not a woman."

  Marsh draw a deep breath like a groan. "I know it won't be easybut damned if I'm goin' to add Delph in on th' price."

  "Well, always recollect, wherever you go or whatever you do, she'll have a price of her own to payever' woman married to a man wantin' to get a start in th' world has. I hope you thought a such things when you was stealin' her awayeighteen years old."

  He winced at that, and then he was angry, both with himself and with Dorie, talking of Delph as if she were a problem or a burden. "Come go with me an' look at Prissyshe's lookin' mighty big an' her time still more'n a month away," Dorie suggested in a kindlier tone, and started toward the barn.

  "I want to see Delph," he said, and started hurriedly toward the

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  house. He stopped on the back porch, cleaned the mud from his shoes, then went into the kitchen, calling loudly, "Oh, Delph."

  He waited and heard soon her quick light feet overhead, and then down the back stairs; and when she came through the door, her coming made the world seem better than it was. He was brave and sure again, smiling at her, feeding on the warm bright life in her face. She was silent a moment, smiling at him with a shyness that seemed to increase instead of lessen as their wedding day came closer. "You want somethin', Marsh?" she asked, and waited, happy that he had left his work with the other men for even a little while.

  He stood confused with his rain dripping hat in his hand. He couldn't for the life of him think of a thing he wanted except what he hadthe simple pleasure of looking at Delph. He struggled to think of some need of the moment, but she, all unknowing, came to his rescue. She felt his leather jacket sleeves and shoulders, and said with a brisk housewifely air that made him think of a child playing house, "It's a good thing you got in. I'll bet you want dry clothes. You must be soaked to th' bone."

  "Socks, dry socks, that's all I want," he said, and wondered if his feet were wet or dry.

  She rushed away, and was back in a moment, and must scold him a bit because, though he sat with his boots steaming by the open oven door, he had forgotten to take them off. "You're already bossy as can be," he scolded, pleased that she took such concern for his feet. The business of changing his socks went slowly. He took advantage of their aloneness in the house, and pulled her down to his knees to learn how the wedding dress was coming on, and if she were still mad at the tobacco.

  She smiled at that, and pulled his ear as she explained, "It wasn't th' tobacco an' waitin' I minded so much, just Dorie, I guess," she added in a whisper.

  "Pshaw, don't say that. She's gettin' old an' a little childish maybe. She wanted you to have a proper weddin' like she'd give one of her own girls, an' never did."

  Delph wrinkled her nose at the wedding dress. "All that time an' money spent for white goods when that new blue dress trimmed with red would ha' done just as well. I'm already feelin' scared somehowDorie's eyes water now when she looks at th' dress. She

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  seems too sensible to be so silly; an' by my weddin' day I'm afraid she'll cry all over th' place an' with Brother Eli so solemn like an' old.I wish we could ha' had a younger preacher."

  "Who'd want to be married by just any young snip of a peacher? Brother Eli's a good man. Nobody can beat him for growin' garden truck," he said, and added haltingly, "II'd kind a like to see you lookin' like a bride myself."

  She laughed and rumpled his hair. "You'll have a bride all right. I'll look so meek an' white an' good you'll never know me. You'll not even know my hand when you put on the ring."

  "Delph?"

  "Yes."

  "Would you mindI mean will it matter so much to youif I don't give you a ring? Now, I mean. I'm a littlewell, when a man's not certain how things. I looked in Hawthorne Town but I couldn't find a thing I liked."

  He felt her arm on his neck slip slowly away. "No,that's all right, Marsh. It'sit's sort of funny. I planned on a ringan' a bright weddin' dress, but. Pshaw, what's a little thing like a ring?"

  Her arms were around his neck again, and she was playing with his hair. "Don't look so sober like. I don't mind, not a bit. Some day you'll be able to buy me half a dozen. When you drill wells an' lease land on your ownor have a job high up for some big company, an' we'll live in a city, an'you won't have it so hard."

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  9

  Dorie reflectively scratched her head with a knitting needle, and stared at her stockinged feet propped on a stick of wood in the bake oven, while she considered the problem at hand. She turned and looked over her shoulder at Katy who sat by the kitchen table. "I don't think you'd better write up th' weddin'," she said. "Delph's Uncle John might get hold a th' paper. How'd he like it, me same as braggin' through th' paper I'd helped in Delph's runaway?"

  Katy gave the answer she gave to all opinions of her mother with which she disagreed, a loud wailing of "A-w-w, Mama," and a tossing back of her hair. She turned to Delph sitting on the other side of the table with her back to Dorie.

  "Wouldn't you like it, Delph?Delph, you gone to sleep?"

  Delph glanced away from the snow falling thickly past the window, and asked with a confused smile, "Wouldn't I like what? I guess I was wool gatherin'."

  Katy laughed, and Dorie counted three purled stitches then said, "You mean you're thinkin' a Marsh. He'll be back, never you fear, tonight at th' latest. Just before Christmas like this there's maybe a rush on th' tobacco market, an' they couldn't sell right away."

  "Last year Angus was gone better'n a week," Katy reminded her mother, and then catching the stricken look in Delph's eyes, turned back to her plea for news. "Aw, Mama, I'll need some news. Why, I've hardly got anything to write, an' I fixed th' weddin' up so pretty like an' all."

  "It was a pretty weddin' to begin with," Dorie said with a softness uncommon in her voice, and looked at Delph until Delph

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  forgot her hunger and loneliness for Marsh in fearing that Dorie was going to burst into tears as she had done at the wedding.

  "That's why I'm goin' to put it in th' paper," Katy said, and sprang up to read what she had written. "'On Saturday of last week the Fairchild home was the scene of what your correspondent hopes will be a long and fruitful union. Miss Delphine Costello, late of Costello, Kentucky, was united in wedlock with Mr. Marshal Gregory, known in this community. The bride was beautifully dressed in a flowing white gown, and carried a sheaf of late blooming chrysanthemums.'I'd like to say somethin' about how nice Marsh looked. I'd never seen him in a real suit before, but in city papers they never say a word about th' groom an' he didn't buy a new suit anyhow.'They were married in the large front parlor'Mama, couldn't I call it a drawing room? 'decorated with potted ferns and chrysanthemums. Brother Eli Fitzgerald who performed the ceremony remarked that in all his seventy-six years he had never seen a prettier bride.'I'd like to say that he trimmed his beard an' had his suit pressed special, but I guess I'd better not'Among those present were Mr. and Mrs. Higginbottom from Cedar Stump'I ought to be truthful an' say a word about how Lizzie cried, an' how you did, too, for that matter."

  Dorie smoothed her knitting and looked at it. "Katy, some day you'll live to cry at weddin's. I laughed, too, when I was young like you."

  "Don't forget th' shower, an' say somethin' about how good ever'body was to ma," Delph suggested, anxious to get the conversation away from tears. "An' you might say, too," she went on after a moment's pondering, "that I'm awful sorry I can't take all their presents with meto South America.'' She smiled a little secret smile. At last her name would maybe be in the Fincastle Outlook among the others who had gone away.

  "Delph, maybe you'll be," Katy began, but stopped when Dorie turned quickly about in her chair, and frowned and shook her head at Katy, and seemed to sigh with her eyes over Delph's back.