Chapter III

We went to the funeral, and Serena and I remained in Silver Valley for a day and night, the guests of Aunt Lizy Haynes. When we returned it was the old Serena who came home. The factitious disguise of the past twelve months had dropped utterly away. She assumed my acquiescence, and received it. Her utmost effort had been given, and my way had proved a failure. Therefore her own was better, and she returned to it with conscientious abandon. Her silence, in regard to her long, faithful struggle, grew, I think, out of her gentle pity for my defeat. Possibly she loved me more, but that was the crowning seal of my descent, marking the fall of authority. With time and tact and no mistakes I might again give oracular advice, but for the present my “mouth was growed up.”

Serena’s floor was not scrubbed, but my fireplace was neat once more, and my house shone with her occasional presence. Ben returned to week-day rags, but his Sunday trousers were always ready. Lonie lolled at home and picked the banjo, lazy indeed, but a vestal in no danger of perjure. Len found “satisfaction,” with Serena’s chair touching his in the firelight. He would grow thin again on coffee and untasted beans, but his smile would endure. Little Ross was happy with his mother’s arms waiting at any time. Of all the children he was the one that showed no improvement during Serena’s period of reformation. He might die of malnutrition, but tragedy--is it not the commonplace of life? And happiness the rare fortune? I questioned Serena for the hundredth time about the boy’s diet. Oh, yes, he was eating eggs right along. But this time I was not satisfied with a meagre affirmative.

“How many does he eat?”

“I don’t keep no count. He goes to the nest when he hears a hen cackle. You told me the fresher they was the better they was, an’ I told him he could have ’em soon as they’s laid. He brings ’em in, gits him a spoon o’ grease, an’ cleans the ashes off the fire-shovel an’ cooks ’em on it right then.”

“But he can’t get them soft that way.”

“Oh, he kain’t eat ’em soft like you showed me how to fix ’em, jelly all through. They make him sick thataway. I thought it wuz better fer him to eat a hard egg than no egg at all. He cooks ’em till they couldn’t be no harder ’thout burnin’ up. An’ he takes enough of ’em. I kain’t look around, seems like, ’thout seein’ him cookin’ one. He’s drinkin’ milk, too, only he ain’t had none sence yisterday ’cause we’ve been out o’ coffee, barrin’ the grounds I boiled over fer Len.”

“What has coffee to do with it?”

“He kain’t take milk less’n it’s about haf coffee. He learned to drink coffee when he was a baby, an’ he won’t take milk at all ef I don’t mix it up good with coffee. Then he’ll drink a lot of it. Yes, he takes plenty milk an’ eggs, but I kain’t see its heppin’ him a bit. He rolls about all night, an’ talks in his sleep, an’ gits up a-frettin’ till we kain’t stand him. I have to take him on my lap an’ nuss him like a baby ’fore he’ll quiet down. Len’s always sayin’, ‘Reenie, fer the Lord’s sake, take the pore little feller,’ an’ as soon as he gits on my lap he thinks he’s all right. An’ him ten year old. Ef the big uns git to be babies again I don’t know what I’m goin’ to do. I kain’t git on with my work a-settin’ backside to it all the time.”

But no one could smile in Serena’s heavenly way and at the same time be sincerely pining to get on with her work.

During her frictionally industrious year, the stream of company had somewhat lessened, but within a month after her return to the old smiling status it had resumed its normal flow. As time passed, the family larder was heavily, though genially, touched. The children’s winter store of “balanced rations” melted away in hospitable warmth, the cows dribbled their milk uncertainly, and if butter appeared on the breakfast-table, the small saucer was much augmented by a big bowl of gravy made of half-cooked flour and grease, which at least was “filling”; and so long as the holiday atmosphere prevailed, every one, family and visitors alike, was superbly indifferent to dietary monotony.

I did not resume my encouraging contributions, and probably this was taken as a hint of disapproval, which caused a slight tension between our houses. One day near dark, when I found that Serena had to provide for nine sleepers besides her own ten, I offered to take three of the small children home with me, and met a dignified refusal. She “wouldn’t think o’ troublin’ me noway.” I went home, my conscience narcotized, and feeling a sort of admiration for Serena’s resourcefulness. But about bedtime she appeared, a little crestfallen, and said: “I reckon I’ll have to let the young-uns come over this onct. Uncle Med Pace drapped in jest now with two o’ his boys, an’ I ain’t got another tick I can put down. Ef it wuzn’t sech a cold night I could make out with a pallet, but we need all the kivers on the beds.”

I told her I should be glad to have the children, perhaps overdoing my heartiness because of her evident compunction. When she left, to send them over, she observed the highland punctilio of asking me to accompany her and spend the night. This with no sense of the ludicrous. It was immemorial custom, from which any deviation, under any circumstances, would have seemed boorish.

The next time I was called upon to receive the overflow from her cabin there was less reluctance in her manner, and the third time it was done with such ease of spirit that I said testily: “Serena, why don’t you take boarders and get a little pay for your trouble?”

About a week afterward I passed Len’s on my way to Beebread. The house was a hundred yards distant from the main road, with only two gigantic apple-trees intervening. An old man, assisted by Serena, was removing plunder from a strange wagon before the door, but I knew better than to stop and investigate a happening so unusual. If I waited, I should eventually hear all about it; if I inquired, I should hear only the least that could be told me. Not to appear prematurely curious, I kept away from Len’s cabin for two or three days. Then I sauntered over. As I approached I heard screams so eerie, so full of anguish, that I ran staggeringly to the house and fell against the shut door. The windows had sheets pinned over them, and the door was carefully fastened with an inside bar. Years passed, it seemed, before Serena came to the door and made an aperture large enough to admit of her passage onto the porch.

“It ain’t nobody but pore little Viny,” she said. “Do you want to come in and see her?”

“Can I help you?” I asked faintly.

“No, there kain’t anybody do fer her but me. She told me before she took her spell what to do. I’ve got to git back to her now, but me an’ Len’ll be over to see you after supper.”

I walked feebly homeward, and waited. Serena and Len came a little late. She explained this by saying: “I have to be sort o’ behind with my supper ever’ other day now. Viny don’t git over her spell till it’s turned five o’clock. You know we’ve been tellin’ you for a long time about Uncle Mace Morgan’s girl, Viny.”

So they had, I dimly recalled.

“She’s been wantin’ to come an’ live with us ever sence her mother died a year ago, an’ Uncle Mace brought her up the mountain Wednesday, with her bed an’ things.”

No longer dimly, but in a flash of apprehensive light, I recalled the story of Viny Morgan. She was a cousin of Serena’s. When a child of thirteen, she had been the victim of a disease that had left her with a withered leg. The youngest of her family, and of an endearing disposition, she had tripped about happily on crutches until she was twenty-one. At that age she was stricken by a malady that produced acute crises of pain. As the years passed the pain increased and the crises came in regular periods every other day. For hours she would struggle in a crazed, semiconscious way, and only her mother could “manage” her at these times. After the mother’s death, the father did what he could for his daughter, while he kept looking about distractedly for some one to relieve him. Serena had the courage and the kindness, but deferred her consent, I think because she and Len in some vague way forefelt my protest.

“You know, Mis’ Dolly,” said Serena, “after you told me I ought to take boarders an’ git pay fer keepin’ folks, I thought ef there was anybody in the world I ought to take it was pore little Viny. She’s goin’ to give me five dollars a week, an’ she ain’t a bit of trouble only ever’ other day when she has her spell. Hit comes on around one o’clock an’ stays till about five, jest four hours is all it is, an’ I don’t have to do anything but set by her an’ rub her, an’ keep her from bitin’ me when the pain gits so bad she’s out an’ out crazy.”

“Serena, are you telling me that you can sit by her and hear her scream like that for four hours?”

“Her mother done it fer twenty year, an’ it wuz harder fer her than fer me. Somebody’s got to take keer of her, an’ Uncle Mace is mighty nigh dead over it. He kain’t hold out like a woman. Five dollars a week’ll hep us a lot. You can git them cloaks you wanted fer the childern, now I’ve got a way to pay you. Ef I can earn it adoin’ what the Lord tells us is our duty, I’m glad o’ the chaince. ’Fore you make up your mind about it, Mis’ Dolly, I want you to come an’ see Viny. Come when she’s feelin’ good, so you can get acquainted. The young-uns are plum foolish about her, an’ I kain’t keep ’em off her bed.”

“Where _is_ her bed, Serena?”

“It’s in the corner by the fireplace. It scrouges us a little, but Len fixed a bench at the foot o’ the bed, an’ the childern set on that an’ keep warm. There wuzn’t room fer Viny’s bed ’twixt mine and the girls’. Viny is shore sociable an’s been wonderin’ when you’ll come to see her. She can crochet the purtiest, an’ gits money fer it, but Uncle Mace don’t know it. Her mother left her a hundred dollars, all in five-dollar gold pieces, that she’d saved up aslippin’ eggs to the store, an’ sellin’ off chickens quiet, an’ makin’ rugs fer them summer folks at Carson. She told Viny to git more ef she could, an’ go to the hospital with it. Uncle Mace never would hear to her goin’, an’ that’s why Viny won’t tell him about the money. He says she’ll never come back alive, an’ he’s agin the hospital awful. He b’lieves the devil gits inter pore innercent Viny to punish him fer some meanness he done onct, an’ he says God will drive it out in His own time. I told him it looked like God would ’a’ put it in him ’stead o’ Viny, an’ he said it hurt him worse fer Viny to have it, an’ he had to work, bein’ a man. ‘You’re too old to work now,’ I told him, ‘an’ maybe if you prayed hard, the Lord would put it inter you an’ let Viny off fer a while,’ but he said it wuz best to let God work it out in his own way. Viny, though, she kinder wants to try the hospital, an’ that’s why she won’t tell him about the money. You’ll take to the pore little thing soon as you look at her, Mis’ Dolly. Len said the day Uncle Mace brought her up the mountain that we ought to go an’ see you first, but I told him I’d lived by you long enough to know what you’d say ’thout askin’.”

Her eyes were bright with appeal. Len was straining anxiously over her shoulder. What could I do but beat down my anti-Samaritan intellect and surrender them to their own undoing? I don’t remember what I said, but when they left me, and I held the lamp to light them across the little bridge in the yard, I saw that they were walking hand in hand, as they liked to do when sharing a supreme pleasure.