The Moonflower Vine

by Jetta Carleton

  One afternoon as they clasped hands in greeting, Matthew suddenly bent his head and kissed her on the mouth. They stood staring at each other for a moment, and after that they couldn’t think of anything to say. Charlotte sat down on the desk top, Matthew leaned against the blackboard. Neither of them could look at the other without that contraction of the face that passes for a smile. The uncle didn’t come and he didn’t come and at last there was simply nothing else to do but fall into each other’s arms and fasten their mouths together.

  13

  Matthew was just past thirty that spring. The girl was seventeen and seemed far older. Her poised manner managed to obscure the fact that she was very young at love and gave her a touch of worldliness which to Matthew seemed the sum of sophistication. He felt unworthy of her, overcome with gratitude that she did not spurn him.

  On her part, she was grateful to him. For she had been lonely. She had also felt sorry for herself, as she had been in love with her mother’s suitor and all he had done was laugh and chuck her under the chin. She needed urgently to exert her personality upon someone who would pay attention. The tall young schoolteacher with the muscular body and nice brown eyes paid attention very nicely.

  Matthew hurried to school each morning with a dry throat, in such haste to get there that he galloped his sorrel mare all the way, urging her on with apologies and the promise of rewards. At nights he rode home reluctantly, impatient for morning. Weekends were an abomination. He fled the house all day Saturday and chopped down trees, pulled up hedge, and uprooted stumps. He wore himself out trying to pass the endless time till Monday arrived again.

  At school he was afraid to be seen within ten paces of Charlotte. All day he scarcely looked at her, yet he reddened with pride when in a quick glance her eyes spoke to him. In the afternoons, waiting for her uncle, they kissed in haste, greedily, in a corner of the room behind the heating stove. After that, they took their customary places, she on the front desk, he safely behind his. Sitting so circumspectly apart, they made love with words across the space between them. The things she thought of to say to him! Roses and jewels fell out of her mouth, kissed words and astonishing passion! Their voices, low and yearning, stroked and caressed each other until Matthew was in anguish.

  He was not, however, so abandoned that he forgot the dangers. He cringed each time one of the students called Charlotte “teacher’s pet.” Since Charlotte turned it off neatly, they did it very seldom. But he wondered what whispers ran among them and what tales they carried home. At times his fear of discovery so unsettled him that he wished they had never met. What a relief if she were to go away and he could forget about her. Then he recalled that soon she would in reality leave him, and he was devastated. He looked forward to the end of school as if it were the end of the world.

  Despite Charlotte’s sighs and occasional tears, Matthew realized that she accepted the end more easily than he. She chatted happily of going home, of seeing her mother again and her new stepfather. All this added to his despair. He was angry with her and in turn more possessive. The thought of marrying her crossed and recrossed his mind, followed regularly by its shadow, the thought of divorcing Callie. His wife came strangely to mind; he felt he had scarcely spoken to her all spring. Yet the cataclysm of divorce was out of the question. Besides the scandal, which could do him irreparable damage, there was the formidable inconvenience, both physical and emotional, of arranging another life. And when he faced it squarely, he could not imagine a life totally and permanently without Callie. (He tried to imagine Charlotte on his farm, and it occurred to him to wonder if in spring she would come running to tell him that the lettuce was up—as Callie did; or greet a new calf with such gentle cries; or if she would butcher a chicken—which Callie always had to do; he didn’t have the heart.)

  He could, on the other hand, imagine a life without Charlotte. Though it was painful, he could do it. He could accept the inevitability of being without her. But not now, not quite yet. He wanted to hold on a little longer. And it bled him that she seemed less eager to hold on than he.

  As the weather warmed and the new leaves came out, he grew more and more distraught. With great effort he taught his classes. At home he was cross with the children and sullen in Callie’s presence. Because he treated them badly, his conscience hurt worse than before. He began to suffer from insomnia, lying tense and feverish through the night, too guilty to pray for sleep. He thought of Charlotte swept away in the various life of the city, leaving him behind. Though he had often envied the cultural advantages of a city, and though he sometimes longed to see its parks and monuments, historical shrines and famous buildings, he distrusted the people who made up a city. He had always looked with disapproval on their habits and attitudes, and considered them, at best, frivolous and pleasure-ridden. Charlotte had opened to him new Elysian vistas, and he thought with a physical thrill of gracious, learned gentlemen and ladies, of beautiful speech and elegant manners, libraries, paintings, music, and contemplation—otium cum dignitate. In all this he had some share as long as he held on to Charlotte. But with her going, this would go. In contrast to her world, his own seemed unendurably drab. In spite of himself, he was filled with resentment against Callie and the children. He cared for them, therefore they shackled him and held him back.

  The possibility of spending the summer in St. Louis, with the excuse of school, tantalized him. He thought of it constantly, how he might manage to get away, what arrangement he could make for the family (who would stay behind, of course) and for the farm work. There were things he could do; and St. Louis was not the ends of the earth. Somehow he could afford it. One evening he made so bold as to mention it to Callie, in an offhand way. He thought he had better sound her out, prepare her. She said very little at the time, but the next day she was sick, and he felt to blame. Prone to nervous headaches, she came down with a monstrous attack. He found her prostrate when he came home. She lay across the bed with a wet cloth on her forehead and a basin on the floor to catch whatever vile liquid was left to boil up from her tortured entrails. Her lips were blue, her sunny, brown-toned skin bleached to the pallor of seed-sprouts. He nursed her through it, till she fell into a sleep akin to coma, the last stage of the illness.

  He suffered, during these attacks of hers, both sympathy and aversion. They were a female trick, a protest, a reproach. They were self-engendered. Yet he felt he had caused this one with the mention of St. Louis, and he smarted under it at the same time that he felt her pain.

  He left her still sleeping the next morning. When he returned (late again, in spite of his good intentions; Charlotte had driven him mad that day), Callie was somewhat revived. She even suggested that he give her a penmanship lesson, something she had not done before.

  “Oh,” he said, having no heart for it, “it’s late. I’ve been teaching all day.”

  “But I’ve been wantin’—”

  “I’ve got to get to bed. Some other time, maybe.”

  He could not look at her. He went on to bed and lay there, pretending to sleep. Callie and Charlotte, two kinds of a life; they tore him apart. At last, worn out by his yammering brain, he rose and pulled on his clothes. Careful not to waken Callie, he crept down the stairs and out to the moonlit yard, where he stood for a moment perceiving the night.

  The stillness, the sapid air…flavors of green, dew, new-turned soil, the pure breath of leaf and weed and grassblade. The soft cows collapsed in the moonlight…his mare whiffling in her stall and the comment of her deft hoof against the manger. Walking to the gate, he looked out across the silvery woods and the pasture, and it seemed to him that he had not seen all this for a very long time.

  He crossed the barnlot and walked on through the walnut grove. To his left lay an open space of meadow. A little distance to the right, a line of oaks and cedars and the white thin trunks of paper birches marked the crooked gully of the branch. Leaving the path, he cut across to the banks and looked down at the water. It flowed over sandrock and pebbles a
nd flashed moonlight at him. A spring bubbled in the darkness below. He descended along a path made by the cows and scooped up a double handful of cold water. It had a clean medicinal taste, suggesting minerals and herbs.

  On the other side of the branch, the arrangement of fence, woods, and the gully made a small triangle, a patch of ground good for little else but grazing and which he seldom visited. He thought now that he might climb up and have a look. He drew himself up the bank by a root and pushed through the bushes into the open. There he stopped in amazement. Alone, almost in the center of the plot, stood a hawthorn tree in full bloom. It had the shape of a great pine cone, round at the base and tapering to a point. And from midway up the base all the way to the top, its small white flowers rose in a solid luminous mass of white.

  Matthew drew his breath in a low whistle. He had forgotten about that tree. He had never seen it in bloom like this. He walked all the way around it, marveling. After a while he went off a way and leaned against another tree (it seemed all the others had drawn back on purpose) and watched his hawthorn burn in the moonlight. It would have burned as whitely, still and impersonal, had he not been there at all. He thought of all that loveliness which might have passed unseen. And it pleased him that he had been granted the privilege to see. Pondering this, he suddenly felt humbled. Not half an hour ago, he had decried his lot. In scorn and discontent he had denied the good of his life, of all the Lord had seen fit to give him. And yet, ingrate that he was, adulterous and deceiving, he had been led to this tree. God had set it as a sign between them. This tall flowering tree was the gentle and divine rebuke.

  “Forgive me, Father,” he murmured aloud. “Forgive my ingratitude.” And he felt a little better.

  He slid to the ground and sat for a long time, half drowsing. When his eyes were saturated with the beauty of the tree, he would glance at the dark woods behind him or up at the sky, and then back quickly at the tree, with fresh vision, as if to see it again for the first time. In that white blaze, the burdens of the spirit seemed consumed. He felt purified and exalted, in a sort of holy trance, like the ecstasy of saints.

  But after a while, the potential calm wore off, and the thought of Charlotte returned, wracking as before. It jolted him from grace and he moaned softly as he tumbled back into longing and despair. He thought of her cool skin and her eyes and the taste of her mouth, and his desire for her, being futile, was the same as anger. He cursed himself. Must he bring her even here, into the sanctuary of his own woods? Rising to his feet, he plunged through the woods behind him, numb to the branches that sliced across his face and the dewberry vines that sawed his ankles. Up the slope he went and down again to where he started, and it did no good. The need of her clung like burrs. And the hawthorn tree mocked him with its beauty. He slumped down again against the oak tree.

  As he sat there, a sound reached him from the direction of the branch, a rustling, as of something pushing its way through the brush. A clod rolled down the bank into the water. Matthew lifted his head and peered across the open space of moonlight. Perhaps one of the cattle had followed him, or an animal had come to drink. There was more rustling, a movement in the brush, and a white figure stepped out to the edge of the clearing.

  “Matthew?”

  It was Callie in her white nightgown.

  “Matthew?” she called again in a timid voice. “Are you there?”

  “What are you doing out here?” he said from the shadows.

  She gave a little startled cry that ended in a laugh. “My goodness! I thought you was here, but you scared me.” She came out into the open and hesitated. “Where are you? I can’t see you.”

  “Here.” He stepped to the edge of the shadow.

  With a murmur of relief she ran toward him. She wore a shawl over her shoulders and her long straight hair hung loose.

  “I thought you were asleep,” he said gruffly.

  “I was, for a while. You’re all right, ain’t you, Matthew? You’re not sick?”

  “No, just tired. Seemed like I couldn’t get to sleep.”

  “I knowed you couldn’t.”

  “I thought I’d take a walk. Maybe the fresh air would help me.”

  “It’s nice out. Not hardly cold at all.” She pulled off the shawl and shook her hair back. “Such a pretty night! And the tree, Matthew! Oh, the tree!” She ran toward it. “I never seen anything prettier, did you?”

  “No,” he said, begrudging her presence. “We’d better go back.”

  “Not yet!” She ran back and took his hand. “Just a little bit longer. Please?” Shy as a schoolgirl, she dropped his hand and looked down. “Seems like I don’t never get to see you any more,” she said. The moonlight made an arc on her bent head. When he made no answer, she looked up and smiled again. “But I know you been awful busy. It’s no wonder you’re tired out.” She turned away, breathed deeply, and flopped down on the ground. “Sit down, honey.” She spread out her shawl for him.

  “You better get up from there. You’ll catch your death of cold.”

  “No I won’t. Come on.” She tugged at his hand.

  “What if the girls wake up?” he said, still on his feet.

  “They’ll be all right. They sleep good, once they get at it.” She took off her shoes and dug her bare toes in the grass. “It feels nice!”

  “Aren’t you worried about the gypsies?” he said. “There’s some around.”

  Her feet stopped moving. “Yes, I heard there was.”

  “I thought I saw their campfires this evening, over there by town, in the woods. I don’t think they’ll be out this way, but I wouldn’t want to take any chances.”

  “No,” she said and was silent for a moment. “Well, they couldn’t get in, anyway. I locked the house good when I come out. The key’s in my shoe.” She lay back on the grass with her arms stretched over her head. “My, the moon’s big tonight.” The front of her gown had come unbuttoned and the round dark eye of one breast stared at him.

  “Come on, Callie. You’ll take cold.”

  “Matthew?” she said softly.

  “Let’s go back.”

  “We will. Come and lie down a while first.”

  “I don’t want to lie down.”

  There was a silence, as he stood scowling across the clearing. Then Callie stood up, facing him.

  “Matthew,” she said in a small voice, “love me.”

  He turned away. “Not now, Callie.”

  “Why?”

  “Not out here.”

  “Will you if we go home?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Please.”

  “It wouldn’t be any good,” he said desperately.

  “I’ll make it be. Oh, Matthew.”

  “Maybe tomorrow. I don’t know. Come on, Callie.”

  She slipped around in front of him again, and before he could move, she had begun to pull her nightgown down off her shoulders. Her arms came out of the sleeves and the garment slid to the ground.

  “Put it back on,” he said.

  “No!”

  She stepped out of the gown and, with an odd smile, lifted her chest so that her plump breasts stuck out. Muttering, he picked up the gown and flung it at her and strode off across the clearing.

  Callie ran after him and caught his arm. “Don’t leave me, Matthew!”

  “Let me alone!” he cried.

  “I have let you alone!”

  They faced each other in silence there in the moonlight by the hawthorn tree. Then with the quick slippery movement of a minnow, she was against him and her arms had gone around him and the hands were working at his shirt.

  “What are you doing?”

  With a sudden wrench she tore the shirt open. She put her breasts against his bare body.

  “Take off your things,” she whispered.

  “I’ll hate you!” He could hardly speak.

  “No you won’t.”

  Her body moved and her hands slid up and down his back and in a voice like warm ra
in she said some things that he had never heard her say before, shocking, titillating things. His heart was pounding the breath out of him. And moaning, as if in grief or terror, he seized her buttocks in his hands and pulled her up against him. Clinging together they fell to the ground.

  Afterward he lay on his back with one arm over his eyes to shield them from the moon. The ground was cold, but he was too tired to stir. He had made love brutally, biting and gripping, as if it were a punishment he was forced to give her. (He found later that he had left great bruises on her.) It had given him no pleasure beyond a bitter satisfaction, like that of revenge. This had never been his way of loving. It disgusted him, both with himself and with her.

  Callie leaned over him, stroking him with her long hair. “It was good, wasn’t it?” she said.

  He drew a long breath and let it out. “I guess so.”

  “Shall we go back now?”

  “All right.”

  But he lay without moving. After a while, Callie brought her shawl and covered him. She sat for a long time without speaking. Once he thought she was crying. He looked at her from under his arm. Her head was bent and the hair fell forward, hiding her face. She held one breast in her hand.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said.

  “I know you didn’t. It’s all right.”

  He closed his eyes and he must have fallen asleep, for when he looked again she was gone. His clothes, which he had flung helter-skelter, lay neatly beside him. He dressed and started toward the house. As he reached the thicket above the branch he paused and looked back. The hawthorn tree stood tall and serene, beautiful for its own sake, and he felt that he had in some way betrayed it.

  14

  When Charlotte went away, they kissed goodbye tenderly and often and vowed to see each other again, someday, somehow. Matthew was desolate. But in spite of himself, he soon found it a pleasure to wake up in the fresh May mornings and stay at home all day. He discovered his farm again and busied himself about the place with the little girls at his heels. Later he would go up to Clarkstown for a few weeks of summer school; though that was not the same as St. Louis, he looked forward to it. Meanwhile he had no lessons to study, no papers to grade, nothing to do except work in the open air and sing loud and fall asleep the minute his head hit the pillow. Such freedom came each year as a complete, refreshing surprise. He could not think of Charlotte without pain. But he could go a full day sometimes without thinking of her at all.