Lamb in His Bosom

by Caroline Miller

  They were having a merry birthday dinner of it, for who would not love a little woman-child with eyes as blue as Lias’s, and a crimped, wet mouth as sweet as that of its mother that it can never have for its own, and little legs that clump like wooden legs across the floor from one’s arms to another’s? Fairby could never decide in whose arms she would rest; when the family was together, as at mealtime, new arms were always reaching for her and she would pass about amongst them, first high on Lias’s shoulder, then low on Seen’s knee, or on Jake’s or Jasper’s. But ever when she was broken-hearted she would run to Margot and be comforted on Margot’s bosom that yet was beautiful and high as are new green hills that have not nurtured men.

  Seen had baked fancy ginger-bread gentlemen and ladies for Fairby. It was a fine layout and the table was merry, with jokes and a song for Fairby, and a big crock of white winter pinks in the middle of the table, picked from Margot’s flower-bed under her sleeping-room window.

  All was merry when Bliss and her father drove up in front of the house, and Lige called out, “Anybody at home?” like as though everything was chicken pie betwixt the Corwins and the Carvers, which it was, for it had to be. Bliss was as meek as Seen would ever have her be when she brought in her presents for Fairby.

  Now who would ever have thought that Bliss would do a thing like this?

  Lias’s face was as red as a turkey-gobbler’s, and his fingers were all thumbs. Margot felt herself trembling all over as she set extra chairs at the table and ran for more crockery. Seen opened up a churn of cucumber pickles and one of sausage, and what with the chicken-and-dumplings and greens and Fairby’s sugar-cake, it was enough for all hands.

  Jasper and Seen and Lige kept up loud talk. Bliss said no more than a humble wish to Seen: “I hope I find ye well.…“ Never did she dare to look Lias in his eyes, and he was as wary of her. Fairby’s eyes went from one strange face to another. Finally her little mouth began to primp and she cried for Margot. Margot took her out of her high chair, and Fairby pressed close against Margot’s bosom, hiding her face.

  In the midst of her eating, Bliss lifted the bundle hidden in her lap and pushed it across the table toward Margot and said:

  “We recollected as how it was the baby’s birthday…. Ma sent hit somethin’ fer hit’s birthday….”

  Then she went on gnawing a hen’s breast bone clean, though she was not a-hungry. There was fine sweat on her upper lip, and the palms of her hands were damp, and her eyes had a feverish look.

  Margot just went on about the little red worsted hood, and cape, and a string of poplar beads dyed blue and strung for Fairby’s neck; and there was a cradle-size comfort in pink and white patches, and stuffed—of all things!—with down from Susanna Corwin’s geese. Seen had much to say about the things and pleased Bliss mightily by saying:

  “I’ll wager ye pieced that comfort ye own self, Bliss!”

  And Bliss blushed and said:

  “Yes, ma’am, I did…. Hit hain’t much….”

  But Fairby would not even so much as lift her head from Margot’s bosom to look at the things, not even the pretty blue beads. When Margot pulled the little red hood over her hair, her chin crumpled and she gave way to heartbreaking screams, and Lias had to take her out to the lot ever to get her quiet. Seen smoothed things over by saying: “Ye’ll have to come oftener. She never did like strange faces….”

  Bliss and her father didn’t stay long. They were in a mighty big hurry, Lige said. Susanna said to hurry right back. They hated to eat and run, but….

  Bliss was the nigh to weeping all the way home. She’d stay away from the high and mighty Carvers after this!—and, Lias, too, the biggity, big-mouthed thing! They always had thought that they were handed down, a little too good for common folks. She’d never set her foot on their place again for all of Seen Carver’s begging her to come back. She’d show Lias.…She’d show Margot.... She’d show ‘em all….

  And she’d never spin another strand nor dye another smidgeon nor sew another stitch for that little biggity Fairby. That was Margot’s child—like as though Bliss hadn’t borned it. It wouldn’t look at its mother once, as much as to say: “Yere welcome to yere heartaches and pains on account o’ me.”…Margot Carver had stolen that child. That Margot Carver had smooth, sly ways that nobody suspected; she was slick as the next one to get what she wanted; and she was mean with it, lording it over everybody.…“Do sit down in my place, Bliss.…I’m not a-hungry, anyhow….” She gave Bliss her leavin’s, that’s what, and Bliss didn’t thank her for them.…That’s my child, and she stole it…just like any other stealing.… But I don’t want it.… She’s welcome to it.… Already it’s been with her so much till it’s out o’ sight with Carver bighead….

  Never would she trouble them again, and never did she, not until the day she died.

  And the fence rail lay unturned. Little gray lizards bred in its bark, and the rail went on rotting like any other weathered rail of Seen Carver’s cow-pen where Margot and Jasper milked in the morning and evening of every day. On warm days, Fairby came with them, riding on Jasper’s back, and she learned to call the cows by name.

  When Bliss and her father had gone off home, Margot felt as though some strength had gone out of her. “As long as I don’t have to see her,” she thought, “I can stand it. But I can’t bear her coming here in my own house, pushing herself in my face, daring me to do something about it. Now that she has come once, she’ll keep on coming, trying to wean Fairby back to her with presents. Why didn’t she keep her, if she wanted her? No, she gave Fairby up without a word, and now she’s made up her mind that she wants her back. And she’ll take Fairby back any time she wants her, and I can’t say a word because Fairby belongs to her. She’ll have everything on her side. Lias will side with her…. Even Ma will side with her—and Jasper, too. She’ll take Fairby back, now that I’ve tended to her and learned to love her like as though she was my own.”

  Margot could not love Fairby more, she thought, if the child were her own. Well she remembered the day when Vince had thrust the little puking, wailing thing into her arms, saying: “Now, Margot, you tend to hit. They’s nothin’ else t’ do.”

  Margot had not known for half a day that Fairby’s feet were crooked, for no one could bear to mention the vile affliction caused from the sin of its being; and Margot could hardly bear for her hands to touch Bliss Corwin’s child, red from its late birth three days gone.

  That first night, when she dressed it for sleep, she found its feet; but she felt naught but pity at the sight for they were clammy with cold, and she held them to the fire, and rubbed them with hot tallow, and nested them in her hands to warm them, while the child nursed warm goat’s milk from a pipkin with a gut nipple on it. When she had got the child warm and full, it lay on her breast and slept; she could feel its breath on her cheek; she could, for the turning of her head, lay her cheek upon its cheek…. She laid her face down against the child’s face, and the feel of it startled her, for the child’s face was softer than any silk, softer than any imaginable thing. It was new flesh, lately molded in God’s palm, yet soft from the touch of His hand, yet warm from the breath of His nostrils, and unspeakably tender since He had so lately set it down in this world. Old Satan never touched finger to the making of such a thing, and Margot knew it, though never did she mouth such heresy; God had molded those little ankles as it pleased Him—with some secret thought, and mayhap a secret purpose, in His mind.

  From that time forth Margot loved the little unwanted thing; she thought that God had told a secret in her ear: Take this child; it is from Me, to serve My purpose. Her thoughts ran thus, and farther: His purpose is to give Lias back to me. This was something that God had to cram down her throat—a recompense, disguised in sorrow, that she had railed against. Because of Bliss Corwin’s child she came as near as ever she came to kneeling and thanking God for all good and all ill that He had ever sent upon her. She thought: next time I will wait and learn His purpose before
I rail against His harshness. God was teaching her a mighty means of battle, she thought-a force stronger than force; He had whispered a secret in her ear—patience.

  But now Bliss would be wanting Fairby back. And Margot had no patience. If Bliss took Fairby back, there was nothing Margot could do. But she would not let it matter with her; she would not break her heart over it. If she had a mind to, she could sit down and cry a week, but she would not do it. She had not let Lias break her heart, and if Lias could not do it, Bliss Corwin would have a hard job trying.

  The night of the day of Bliss’s visit Margot got Fairby to bed, and covered over the cradle with the pink-and-white comfort. I’ll not let them see that I care, she thought.

  Then she ripped the sole from her shoe so that Lias would have to stay up after the others were abed, and resole it. She sat with him, and sewed by the fire after the house was still with sleep. She held the sewing hard in her hands, to keep them from trembling; it was new pantalets for Fairby.

  She dropped her head a little lower over her stitches, and her face was covered with blushes like a silly young fool’s, for she found it hard to tell Lias this thing that she had made up her mind to tell him:

  “Lias….”

  He pushed the bodkin through the leather of her shoe. “Huh!” he said, to answer her.

  “I want a child o’ me own….”

  His bodkin stopped; she looked at him and could swear that he was blushing harder than she was. And that tickled her….

  “I want a man-child with eyes like your’n and hair like your’n…a little Lias that I can hold and suckle and raise up for me very own so long as I live….” She was proud of this speech that she had made up to tell Lias.

  Lias’s face was a sight to see…Margot was the on-gonest woman! Imagine yore wife comin’ straight out with a thing like that! The longer Margot watched him, the more his fingers fumbled; he was beet red and plum put out. She wanted to say, “Lias, you fool!” She wanted to hug him fit to burst his lights.

  He said:

  “I don’t see how in creation you ever got yore shoe into any such a fix….”

  She gathered up Fairby’s pantalets, rose to her feet, and went and hung her head near his ear. She whispered, laughing:

  “See if ye can’t make out to find me a man-child next time ye go to the Coast.”

  Just to say something, he said:

  “You don’t know what you want….”

  Then she had him:

  “It seems to me it’s you that can‘t make up yore mind….”

  He knew that she was thinking of Bliss. She went on to bed, and he went on sewing the shoe. Danged if Margot wasn’t worth twenty Blisses. Danged if he’d look toward that fence rail again, let it lie any whichaway.

  Seen’s altheas and bridal wreath bloomed in March, as is their way. Warm wind stormed through the woods like a thousand horses snorting and tromping up dust. All the dooryard was arrayed in flower-blooms, and bees tumbled, head first, onto verbena blossoms, and butterflies crossing the yard uncertainly halted to drink sweetness from Margot’s flower-bed under her sleeping-room shutter. An old hen made a dust bed right in the middle of a bed of pinks, and drowsed there with yellow biddies climbing all over her, but nobody much cared except Fairby, who liked to shoo the chickens with her little apron.

  Jasper and Jake and Margot went seining when the swamp water warmed up under the April sun. Margot and Jake scared up the fish toward the seine; Margot waded in Lias’s old breeches. Jasper ran his hand inside the old stumps to scare out the big fish in hiding. They waded waist-deep; Margot could feel the big cats shoving between her legs, escaping. When they pulled the seine out on the mud, there were more fish in it than an army could eat.

  This was the first time ever she had come fishing. She aimed to come again; it was good for anybody to get away from cooking and sewing for a little spell; and Ma could keep Fairby for her any day….

  But she didn’t go seining again soon, for Lias was the master—mad because she didn’t have any more sense than to wade waist-deep in cold water and to come home, dog-wet, in the cold wind. He did give her a talking-to, but she turned her face away to hide the smile at the side of her mouth. You’d think she was made out of sugar, the way Lias went on! Now she could not lift a keg of lard without Lias jumping up like it was a rattlesnake she had ahold of! You’d think this child of his’n was solid gold, or spun glass, or some such thing, the way Lias cared for Margot because of it. He would not even let her milk the cows now, for fear that one might kick her; he did not want her ever out of his sight. When he came in from the fields, if she were not there for him to see, his first words would be: “Where’s Margot?” Sometimes she would stay overlong in the loft, o’ purpose, seeing after wool or feathers or seasoning that were stored there, just to hear Lias’s quarreling that she ought to be about where she belonged. She would hear his words, and her heart would savor them; they were like the taste of new baysalt to a body starved on fresh food.

  She had a hold on Lias now. He quarreled, and hid his tenderness for her in fault-finding, but she was satisfied; she bore her child gaily, as though a song hummed around her heart night and day, like a clock running down in music. She had never heard anything so sweet as Lias’s quarreling at her because she would not rest in bed or eat more. Sometimes she would note him watching her as though she were a stranger to him, engrossed in secret, weighty business which he could not understand.

  She passed his interest by, high-headed—So you care more about me than you thought you did, eh, my fine mister?

  He never told her of his fear—You are too old to have a child; you will die and I will feel the blame for it; being old and strong, you will grow a child so big that you cannot deliver yourself….

  The year enlarged; the earth pushed up against its fully nourished fruiting roots; heavy seed-pods filled and, in time, burst. Never had Lias seen his corn so high nor his cotton so rich in squares. He dreaded the day in September when Margot would bear her child, as a good woman bears her children, upon her husband’s knees. Fairby, for all the compassion that he felt for her, was only half his child. This child of Margot’s would be his very own, born in wedlock to its rightful place as its father’s son. Bliss should never have tempted him. A man is hardly to blame when he follows a woman who beckons to him. Lias thought: Sometime I will tell Margot of that time when Bliss came out to the crib looking for me, and of the time when she came down to the creek looking for me. I will not make mention of the time when I first kissed Bliss. Let Jasper tote tales if he will…. Let him….

  Lias was always possessed of dull anger when he thought of how Jasper told Margot about the time when he had first kissed Bliss; he thought, till the day he died, that Margot would never have known of that if Jasper had not told her.

  There was but one day between the births of Margot’s first child, a son, and Cean’s fourth, a daughter.

  Seen would have had her hands full if she had tried to do everything that she wanted to do. But, as was her way, Cean fended for herself and sent word to her mother by Lonzo the next day that they were all well and to come when she could. Lonzo told Seen that they had named this last child for its grandmother and its Aint Eliza-beth—Loveda Elizabeth.

  Lonzo reached Seen’s house before Margot’s child was born, and waited down in the cow-lot with Jasper so that he could take Cean word of Margot when he went home. Jake was shucking corn up in the crib, watching after Fairby so that she would not be in the way up at the house, whistling as though nothing was the matter. They could hear the clean thin air of his whistling; it seemed out of place now that the house was so still.

  Jasper was the master-worried over this thing. His knife hacked into a top rail of the weatherbeaten fence around the cow-lot; he cut out a chip, split it into little threads of wood, broke them, one by one, in his fingers and tossed them away. He would give his right arm to be sitting yonder somewhere, so that she could call him if she needed him. He would burn in torm
ent for Margot, if she told him to; he loved her nighabout as good as he loved his mother. He and Margot milked the cows morning and evening. Any time he wanted to, he could call to mind the days of winter, the warm breath of the milk that smoked like fog on winter mornings, the hard trampled ground underfoot, the bleak sky—dark in the early day, dark in the early night—the lazy flank of a cow leaning hard on his forehead; and there, where he could see her by turning his head a little sideways, would be Margot, milking a thin stream from a cow’s warm fuzzy bag. It was on such a day that she had told him about this child: “I hope ye’ll help me raise it, Jasper. I can never depend overmuch on Lias.”… Up at the house she would be quiet-mouthed with them all, patient under Lias’s hard words, putting herself at Ma’s beck and call, teasing Jake out of his sullen moods. Down here in the cow-pen she would turn her face toward Jasper and tell him this or that thing that was a great matter to her. He would say little to answer her; there was never much to be said.

  This labor had got the best of Seen. She was too old to be steady on her feet or clear in her head, much less to help a woman bear a child. She was too old.…She shut her eyes to pray about this thing, for she knew no more she could do for Margot, and Lias’s face was as white as a sheet and he was crying like a woman. Margot’s lips were blue, and her face seemed unknowin’ of anything but pain; her eyes were clenched shut in their sockets. So Seen began to pray.…

  Margot’s eyes opened wide. She gasped:

  “Oh, Lias…take Ma out.… I don’t need prayin’ now.… Go get Jasper.… Do ye hear me? Go get Jasper!”

  Lias went out the back door and whooped Jasper up from where he stood yonder by the cow-pen.

  Jasper’s face whitened slowly; his hands began to shake. He threw away his whittling and shut up his knife and went toward the house. Jake, shucking corn, shut up his whistling.