Chapter IV: I went to see Viny

They had helped her from her bed to the fireside, and she talked, softly eager, while her slim hands were busy with a needle and Serena’s quilt-scraps. Without a knowledge of her age, I should have taken her for a frail girl in her twenties. She had the profound gentleness and mystic smile of one recently released from intolerable pain. They were all proud of her. Lonie took her advice as to the pattern of a new dress. Ned brought her an enormous apple whose keeping qualities he had been testing. Len came to the house for a drink when he could more easily have gone to the spring, because he had thought of something that would make Viny laugh.

Her illness was not mentioned until some one spoke of her mother’s long devotion. Then her warm, hazel eyes were lit with idolatry.

“At first,” she said, “my attacks come hit or miss, and it was awfully hard for mother to plan her work. She had everything to do at home, and no help except father. They were all married off but me. I prayed fer my spells to come reg’lar, and after a while they did. Then mother could lay out her work, and get on all right.”

Her disease was terribly real, there was no doubt of that; but I wondered if, through concern for her mother, she had actually psychologized her crises into periodicity.

When I left the house Serena accompanied me a few steps. Len joined us, eager to know what I thought of Viny, and it was easy to say all that they were longing to hear.

“I knowed you’d like her,” said Serena. “She offered me one of her five-dollar gold pieces to-day, an’ I was ashamed to look at it, knowin’ all about her savin’ up fer the hospital. I made her put it back in that little bag she carries her money in. She don’t eat but onct a day. Then it’s only a little butter an’ a ’tater. I couldn’t think o’ chargin’ her fer a ’tater. Sometimes she’ll taste an egg, but she brought three hens, an’ I git more o’ the eggs than she does. She brought her own bed an’ kivers, so I kain’t charge her fer sleepin’. She lays there, not botherin’ anybody, an’ ever’ other day when she’s not out of her mind, she heps me piece quilts, an’ I kain’t tell you the things she’s patched.”

“Perhaps you ought to pay _her_, Serena,” I said, but the irony did not penetrate.

“She wouldn’t let me do that. She says it’s only right fer her to hep me. No, she wouldn’t take pay fer piecin’ an’ patchin’.”

I was about to ask Serena why she couldn’t let Viny pay her for the service she received, but happily for me, I was forestalled by Len.

“Anybody,” he said, “that would take pay from Viny fer the leetle mite she eats would be so stingy they’d screak. An’ Reenie kain’t charge fer waitin’ on her. Ef there’s anything plain in the Bible it’s how we ought to take keer o’ the sick.”

“About them cloaks, Mis’ Dolly, you got fer Ray an’ Lissie,” Serena remembered to say, “I’ve studied out how I can pay you back by makin’ a fire an’ milkin’ fer you when the weather’s bad. I reckon that would suit you same as money.”

“Oh, a lot better, Serena!”

“I thought you’d like that,” she said, with a countenance as joyful as if the debt were already paid.

As the weeks passed I found there was only one objection to Viny as a member of the household. Her “bad day” interfered with company, particularly if it fell on Saturday or Sunday. During her attacks, light and sound were like blows, and before entering on her torture she would implore Serena to keep the room darkened and silent. This meant that family and guests had to crowd around the little kitchen stove, impossibly subdued, until Viny “come out of it.” At those times I avoided the house and its immediate region. Never in my life had I watched the calendar so closely, fearing that I might make a mistake and hear those screams again. But once I ventured over on a “bad day,” waiting until five o’clock, when Viny would be “getting through.” I listened and heard only a low moaning. Serena let me in. Viny’s pretty head was weaving agonizedly, and in her broken moans I could distinguish an anguished appeal for help. “She’s bearable easy now,” said Serena, returning to the task of rubbing her patient’s head and arms and back.

I went to the bed and looked at Viny. Of her eyes, only the whites could be seen. It was hard to believe that within an hour they would be soft, dark, intelligent. The sight was too ghastly, and I retreated to the porch. After a few moments Serena came out.

“She’s still now,” she said. “She’ll lay there quiet fer haf an hour, then she’ll be all right, only awful weak.”

I looked closely at Serena. It was clear that she was failing. “You can’t hold up at this,” I said, grasping at the commonplace.

“I could ef folks would change off with me onct in a while. I could hold up fine. But what you reckon that ol’ Ann Hite said when I sent her word I’d wash fer her ef she’d come an’ stay with Viny jest once? She said it ’ud take a year’s washin’ to pay fer that.”

“Serena,” I said, firmly defensive, “you needn’t look about for people as good as you are. They don’t exist.”

“I tried to slip out from Viny the last time, an’ let Lonie stay with her, but it wuzn’t more’n two er three minutes ’fore Lonie come runnin’ out cryin’, an’ showed me her wrist bleedin’ where Viny bit her. Viny cried awful about it when she come to, but Lonie won’t try it any more, so I’ll jest keep at it. I ain’t got to come over an’ hep you any ’bout milkin’ an’ makin’ fires, but you see how it is, an’ I reckon you don’t blame me. I’m studyin’ out how I’ll pay you some time.”

“Don’t speak of it again, Serena,” I replied, thankful to have escaped the degradation of lying in bed and letting her come around the curve in the freezing weather to milk for me.

A month, perhaps, went by, and the influenza began to climb the mountain. As it drew nearer, I thought of Len’s household, with two invalids already in the crowded cabin, and the prospect took my breath. One morning about daylight I heard Len’s voice calling me, and hurried down the stairs to hear the worst.

“Reenie wuz took last night. Looks like she’s goin’ to git bad off. An’ I’ve come to ast you whatever’ll I do about Viny?”

“Is this her bad day, Len?”

“No, that thing don’t tech her till to-morr’.”

I knew what he was expecting me to say, but I launched a surprise that astounded him.

“Then hitch up as quickly as you can, put her things in the wagon, and take her back to her father.”

His lips made two or three quivering attempts at speech. “I thought maybe you’d----”

“No, Len. I can’t take care of Viny. I _won’t_ take care of Viny. And the only thing you can do about it is to take her back to her father.”

“I reckon I’ll have to,” he said, in dazed dejection.

“How long will it take you to get off?”

He glanced at the first rays of the sun, then said: “Two hours’ll do.”

“Then in two hours I will be over to say good-by to Viny and take care of Serena until you get back.”

He went, his long, stooped back plainly telling me that I had been weighed in the balance and struck the beam of heaven.

For about two weeks I was kept in close attendance on Serena and the children. Just as they were getting up, it came my turn to go down. Neighbors, far and near, were ready with kind help, but it was not until Serena walked in, a little pale yet from her own convalescence, and looked down at me with her blue eyes almost hazel dark with feeling, that the temperature of the pillow under my head dropped to a hopeful point. The bland movements of her hands seemed to be fulfilling an old desire. Behind her was the generation of Uncle Lish, who could sit and sing till the fire was out; and hovering with her presence was the never-defined equation that rescues from loneliness the edge of the grave. It did not trouble me to know that on my recovery I was going to be as foolish about Serena as Len and her children.

After I could sit in my chair, it was as good as hearing gentle music just to see her on the other side of the fire, her hands in her lap, with the placidity of eternity doing nothing at all. One day she spoke of Viny.

“I reckon you was right about Viny. I didn’t know how scrouged we wuz till I got to stayin’ over here with you. Seems like they’s more’n as many agin of us now, an’ when we all try to git around the fire, some of us kain’t see the blaze, let alone feel it. When they’s company the childern have to set back so fur they’re too cold to git their lessons.”

It was then that the vague trouble about those two unbuilt rooms crystallized in my mind with unbearable clearness. By some economical turn or twist, I would get them put up.

“Serena,” I said, “I’m going to have enough lumber hauled up the mountain to make two more rooms at your house, and I’ll have Cleve Saunders build them if Len can’t get the time.”

“Oh,” she cried joyously, “me an’ Len wuz sayin’ last night how fine that would be! I reckon he’d better not go after pore little Viny till you git ’em done.”