by Unknown
“She never talked to anybody much. Not even me. She was a silent person, Jerry.”
“Where was she born?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never heard it.”
“It must have been a dreary place.”
“It did get dull when the turnpikes opened up and boats got few. I used to be so scared when the boats came through. Ma hid me in under the roof; but there was a knothole looking into the tap. I remember crawling out and watching boaters drink. It made me fearful to see Ma so fearful and I’d hold my breath. But I was curious to see what they would look like. Once one looked up and met my eye. He was young and looked away. I remember him. He came back after.”
She sorted over the berries in her lap.
“I mind when I was just a little girl a boat came down from Rome with gentry in it. One of them had a uniform, and one was very young and stood up straight. Ma talked to him a little. His name was Mr. Clinton, or something like it. They didn’t sleep inside, but had a fire down beside the creek.”
“When did you run away, Norah?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Some time ago. It was in spring and I had been out fishing in the woods. It seemed to me it was a shame to go back home. When I looked up and seen the tavern in the dark and Ferris in the tap awaiting for me, I just took his skiff and lit out down the creek. Then I landed and got out and walked south through the woods. I came out on a farm. There was a young surveyor there; and since then I’ve been here or there.”
Her eyes looked slantwise toward him. “Now I’m here,” they seemed to tell him. Jerry fingered a loose callus in his hand. She signed a little.
“It scarcely seems as if I’d been brought up. It seems there’s only just one thing I know to do. And sometimes I feel sad.”
Jerry’s heart hammered.
“What do you like the most in all the world, Norah?”
She gave him her little tingling smile; but suddenly her eyes darkened; she put her bonnet back from her head and let the evening wind blow on her face.
“I’d like to hear a sermon. There’re no camp-meetings round about here, are there, Jerry?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’d like sometime to hear a meeting and an exhortation. The exhortation is the best there is to hear.” Her voice became abstract. “When there’s a powerful exhorter I can feel a push in me, as if I lifted on my toes. It’s like what I suppose deliverance is to a woman.”
Her voice broke down.
“I’ve never been gifted to confess myself. Jerry, have you ever confessed in public meeting?”
Her mouth was trembling and her eyelids uncertain: she looked ready to cry.
“I always go if I’m opportuned to it. Hoping. But it never comes. Jerry, I think if you could take me sometime, maybe I could. You’ve been so good to me. You’re a good man, Jerry. I have never felt so good toward anyone before. Maybe I could.”
She put her hands on his knees.
“Jerry, if one should hold hereabouts, would you take me to it?”
“Surely, Norah. If you want it.”
He saw her black eyes melting.
The wind was drawing from the south. It had a cool touch on the hot, dry meadow; it combed the grass to lift the bee from the black-eyed Susan and shake the bells of columbines. It brought no clouds, but it was soft with rain… .
4
‘You had a key in your hand”
She had strange ways. He never knew how next she would approach him. One day she asked him, “Jerry, what’s the most beautiful thing you ever saw?”
He tried to think as they walked together along the creek. But she had ceased seeking his answer.
She said: “The most beautiful thing I ever saw was when I ran away from home. I landed on the south shore of the creek at night, and walked all night till I was tired. I slept under a pine tree and in the morning the sun woke me by heat upon my eyelids. I opened them and saw an apple tree blooming in the middle of the woods.”
He said: “That must have been beautiful.”
She was walking with bent head and her voice was soft.
She said: “Lately I’ve remembered it, Jerry. When I’m out here by my-self, listening to your piler striking down the valley, it conies back to me. It was so still that morning that you could hardly trace a petal’s falling. Why do you suppose I think of it?”
He said: “I don’t know, Nor ah.”
For a while she walked with her eyes lost. Then she lifted her face to his. She had to lift her chin to see his face.
She said: “Can you think why, Jerry?”
He said: “No.”
“But I know why, Jerry. I thought of it just now.”
Her eyes were glad, like a child’s.
“But I’m not going to tell you, so don’t ask me, please.”
“I won’t ask it if you don’t wish it, Norah.”
Her voice grew tender.
“Thank you, Jerry. Very much. Because if you were set and minded to find out, I couldn’t keep my secret, and it seems it’s the first thing of my own I’ve ever had. …”
She was a strange girl, because she could not bear to be touched; when they walked, even if they were out of sight of Corbal’s, she would not let him take her hand. But she would play around him with her words.
“Jerry, how do you love me best?”
He flushed, as she stood off, tilting her face up at him.
“You won’t say, will you, Jerry?”
“Why do you want to know?”
She seemed to bubble at him, but her eyes were sly.
“Do you want to know how I love you the best, Jerry?”
“How?”
She shook her head.
“It’s not a decent time to tell you. You’re too slow. Why were you so slow with me, Jerry?”
He made no answer.
“You looked at your two hands, Jerry, rightful and wrongful. But you couldn’t help it. Tell me that.”
She shook her head again: “No, you’ve told me by your face.”
She came stealing up to him, standing quite close, on tiptoe.
“Am I mean to pester you, Jerry? Does it matter? Us alone? We have found some comfort. It’s not wrong.”
He said harshly: “Have you ever seen a mare, Norah?”
“Yes. She is afraid of being beautiful. She trembles.”
“Yes. Did you ever see a doe who’s heard an answer?”
“Yes, I’ve seen a doe… . She is a humble thing. … It makes her meek.”
“Or a vixen, all sleek, and knowing all there is?”
“No. I’ve never seen a vixen, Jerry.”
“Even the vixen doesn’t turn her head.”
Her laughter pealed through the leaves.
“Am I the one thing with no modesty, Jerry, because I look at you?”
She looked into his lean, dark face. She saw his eyes grow harder. Her laughter softened, and she touched his hand.
“Is it unbecoming, Jerry?” …
It surprised him to hear her sing. Her voice lost clearness when she sang; it was husky then, and had unexpected depth.
One day he found her alone. He had come up to Corbal’s on a Saturday afternoon when the piler needed greasing and the gang had struck off early. Corbals were away in Victor, and she was alone in the kitchen carding whole wool for the miller’s wife. He heard her voice when he came past the dam.
“Why is red the rose’s dye That it may seem thy blushes’ .hue? All that’s fair by love’s decree Has been made resembling thee.”
The comb was idle in her hand, the fleece like a billowed cloud to rest her feet.
“Why is falling snow so white But to be like thy bosom fair? All that’s fair …”
After that she sometimes sang for him. She liked soft songs that required a small range for her voice.
“Just like love is yonder rose, Heavenly fragrance round it throws, Yet tears its dewy leaves disclose, And in the midst of briers it blows.”
She
was singing it to him.
“And when rude hands the twin buds sever They die and they shall blossom never. Yet the thorns are sharp as ever, Yet the thorns are sharp as ever.”
She let the carding comb drop into the fleece. Her wet eyes lifted to his. Sometimes she cried easily; and at such times it seemed to him that he could trace more plainly where the welt had been laid on across her face. But to-day it had nearly vanished; and when she said, “Jerry, don’t you know that that’s what’s going to happen to us you a married man, and me?” a queer little piece of instinct in him asked, “Why does she want to stay here? She’s got along the way she wished without money up to this time. Why does she want to stay?”
But she said, “I feel like a different person here, Jerry. I feel so good that I feel bad. It’s you make me feel different, I guess, because I never felt the same before.”
He said, gruffly, “There’s no need for feeling different.”
“I do. I do, now, when you say that but won’t look at me.”
She took up the comb again and began idly carding.
“Is it a sin? It is; but it’s a comfort to you. Is it a sin for me, then? To repay you with comforting? Haven’t I brought you what you never had?”
Her little hands became savage on the fleece.
“Answer me, Jerry. Answer me, I tell you.”
“Yes, Norah.”
“Then why?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. It don’t seem rightful.”
“It’s you,” she said. “It’s in you.”
She pointed her finger.
“Stop it!” he shouted. “Shut that everlasting clap, can’t you? I can’t stand it. What difference does it make to you? It never has.”
She seemed to withdraw upon her stool. He got up and walked out of the door. He put his hands in his pockets and walked resolutely.
“Jerry.”
He would not look round.
“Please, Jerry.” Breathlessly. Her feet were running after him along the grassy track. He would not hurry, nor would he slow.
“Jerry, what’ve I been saying? It don’t count. There’s me, isn’t there? Here. All of me, Jerry.”
She was not beautiful, the way he had thought to look at beauty. She stood close under his chin with her head bent, her hands hanging, the palms of her hands stiff, like a child’s, ready to beat her skirt. The hair grew high on the back of her neck, from a little point, and the ends curled like grapevine tendrils… .
Corbal looked back again at Norah. His stiff, square beard had been brushed free of flour for his trip to town. He wore his madder-yellow linsey shirt with the green worsted scarf for a belt; and now he was downing his malt brew. They had had a stew of bass for their supper, done with leeks and pork and sour milk a dish his wife knew.
“No,” said Corbal. “I don’t know if there ever was a camp-meeting hereabouts.” He squared his elbow to the table and lifted his pewter. “I don’t hold with public prayer. Religion is bad for a man; it turbulates his blood, making it too hot for him; it’s like running stones too long without no wheat for them to bite on. If a man becomes interested in religion, pretty soon he gets to running out of wheat. Or else it thins the blood in him like ague or the intermittent fever. There, are such, but I can’t stand for them. They feel the need of wheat like any stone, and look around for other people’s. No, I don’t know that there is going to be camp-meeting hereabouts.”
He looked at the girl not unkindly.
“Of course,” he said, “I wouldn’t set myself against a preacher-wedden. Not that I regard it’s necessary. Me and my old lady there got joined without no minister. I just laid out some dollars in a pair of breeches for her pa, a length of French calico to suit her ma’s complexion, a Sutherland muskit, and a barrel of prime Devereux. We’ve got along right good.”
His wife was clearing up the supper table, her short, stolid figure heedless as a deaf woman’s.
“With women, now, perhaps it’s different. I’m not a man to lay down laws regarding women’s needs. I wouldn’t say.”
He got up for his nightly passage to his room. He closed the door, sat on his bed, and threw his boots on the floor. The bed strings creaked.
Coming up behind Norah, Mrs. Corbal touched her shoulder. It was so unexpected that Jerry as well as Norah jumped. Mrs. Corbal’s face was smiling down at them. She had an air of secret pride. She put her thumb against her breast and nodded at them.
“Me Christian woman.”
“Oh,” said Norah.
“Yes.” She nodded. “Camp-meeting comes next month.”
Norah’s face lit up.
“Where?”
The woman lowered her voice.
“Corbal doesn’t like it. I go every year. Beyond Pittsford. This side Rochester. By Little Stone Brook crossing. In Henslow’s woods.”
She smiled at them. Her broad, high cheek-bones made her face look moonish.
“I go,” she said. “Oh, yes. Confess.”
Looking back from her bedroom door, her dark red-brown eyes were mystic.
Norah said: “Oh, Jerry! Can I go?”
“Why, yes.”
“Will you take me?”
He said, “I don’t know how the work will be then. We are getting on. I’m laying the flooring on the southward end.”
“Promise me it will be done so you can go.”
He smiled into her eyes.
“I will if I can get away.”
“I wouldn’t want to take you off the work, if you didn’t want to come, Jerry. But I want to go. Oh, I want to go. I feel it in me. As if I had a string to pull me. I can feel it even now. Already.”
“We’ll go.”
“Oh, Jerry, you’re so good.”
She moved over to the miller’s stool to sit beside him. For once her hand crept into his unasked. She sat quite still; but Jerry felt as if the palm in his were singing.
“Jerry.” She whispered. “To me it’s like your work for you.”
“It looks as if it meant a lot more to you than my work does to me.”
“It’s similar. I feel it. As if I could do things if once I could confess. Maybe with you along I could.”
He was glad to see her happy, but in himself he felt a staleness.
“It’s funny, Norah. But since I’ve come here my work don’t stand for much with me. It seems I’m sick of it. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. You will be rich by it. Men will look up at you. Men will say, when everything is done, He did that crossing. He made that lock.”
“It doesn’t seem to matter any more. And I don’t make it. I just do what I’m told. Norah, I feel as if I’m looking somewhere for something. Something in me is unloosed and questing. It seems as if I heard littler things, as if I could smell new smells. But I don’t care for working any more. I used to take a joy for feeling a hammer in my hand.”
“You’ve never shown me your work, Jerry.”
“I’ll take you down on Monday if you want to see it.”
“Monday afternoon.”
“In the evening when the men are inside the shanty.”
“I want to see it. I want to know every last thing you do, Jerry… .”
“Jerry, when you are that way, I feel as if my hands had turned to vines. Have you ever cut a grapevine and seen the sap come out of it? My fingers feel like every one a broken vine.”
“It’s time I went back now.”
“It’s early yet. Jerry, I couldn’t bear for us to part now. Rightful or wrongful, I couldn’t bear it.”
“We don’t have to.”
“We will soon. I can feel it. Jerry, tonight I thought you wouldn’t ever come. I felt as if I walked in a strange town. And the watch found me and put me in the jail for vagranting. My body felt like vagranting. And they put me in the mill to make me humble and the jail matron beat me till I trod it.”
“You were dreaming, Norah.”
“Yes, it was a dream. I dreamed it. And then t
hey took me out when I had trod the necessary hours. And my feet were sore. They put me into a cell, on the floor, and left me there. And I felt the time in my feet, the time of waiting. In the soles of my feet. I felt it mounting in me and I was like the jail itself without air and light. But I didn’t feel humble, for I heard you coming. And you opened the jail with a key, Jerry. You had a key in your hand and you turned it in the door and I smelled apple blossoms.”
“It’s time I went.”
“Do you ever smell the apple tree?”
“It doesn’t seem so.”
“Jerry, did you ever lie in grass upon your back and watch clouds go over your head with the sunlight in the wind behind them?”
“Corbal will be getting up.”
“Not yet, Jerry. Lie still.” “He will be wakening now.”
“He never hears. His head is like grinding millstones.” “Mrs. Corbal, then.” “She doesn’t care.”
“Norah, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a two-mile walk for work.” “There’s time, Jerry. Lie back. Did a person ever tell you you looked beautiful at sunrise?” Jerry laughed.
“No, not anyone at sunrise.”
“I don’t mean that. With the sleep all white on your skin.” He forced himself to go. “Jerry… .”
5
“The sun sets in the lap of God”
“You must speak soft, Norah.”
“Is that where you live?”
“Yes. In the barrack. The kitchen’s on this end.”
“And that’s where the men sleep?”
“Yes. You can see them through the window. Now let’s go down, if you want to look at the work.”
“What are those, Jerry?”
“Those? Oh, the piles. We’ve drove eight hundred of them now. The driving’s nearly done. That’s the engine.”
“That big thing?”
“Yes.”
Their shapes stole softly out on the plank floor of the crossing. Norah laid her hand against a beam.
“Oh.” She snatched it back and sniffed her fingers. He heard her breath thin and shivery. “What’s on it? It’s all over it.”
“Tar oil. We have to keep the tracks greased or there’d be fire.”
“It smells awful.”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
“I’d like to see it work. I’d like to see it driving down a pile.”