Chapter I

She was not an unalloyed joy that first year of our friendship. Her imperturbability did not always seem as a restful evergreen wall, in whose shadow I could sit until perplexities lost their heat. At times it was a “no thoroughfare” with the meadows of desire gleaming beyond.

I called one day and found her churning by the spring, a pleasing picture, too, under the trees. Her rounded, youngish figure gave no hint of her seven-fold maternity, and however ragged the rest of her family might be, she always magically managed to be neat. She was singing leisurely and churning in rhythm--a most undomestic performance; but my eye was not Mrs. Poyser’s, and if it had been, it could not have embarrassed Serena.

“I’m takin’ my time,” she said, “fer this is my last churnin’ fer a good spell, I reckon.”

“Your last? Why, is the cow sick?--dead? And you have just bought her?” I asked, my concern sharpened perhaps by the thought of a very inconvenient loan that had gone abysmally into her purchase.

“She got so many sweet apples last night she’s foundered herself--clear light ruined, granpap says.”

“Surely you didn’t turn her into the orchard?”

“Why, a few apples wouldn’t hurt her. But there was a whole passel on the ground that I couldn’t see fer the weeds an’ briers. An’ she got ’em.”

“But I lent Ben my scythe to cut those briers.”

“His poppie needed him in the field, an’ he couldn’t git the time right off. When he did, we couldn’t find that scythe nowheres. I hate it about the cow,” she assured me cheerfully; “but it had to happen, I reckon.”

I looked about me. At that moment I could see nothing artistic in Ned’s half of a shirt looped about one shoulder; there was only pathos in little Lissie’s naked, buttonless back; and I could not placidly think of Len, as I had passed him a few moments before, showing ankles as sockless as ever was Simpson. But perhaps it was the thought of that loan, with its indefinite time extension, that made me wish to set a shade of anxiety on Serena’s unclouded brow. At any rate, I began to sermonize on the merits of discontent and the virtue of ambition.

Her face brimmed with astonishment that finally broke into speech: “But I’ve four beds, and bread on my table! What more do I want?”

What more could I say? So man, in some grateful season, may look up to the seated gods: “I’ve four religions and a bumper crop; what more do I want?” And what can the seated gods do but smile patiently?

I retreated, seeking my usual solace after all defeats--the unreproachful woods. Near a small clearing, in the quiet shield of some bushes, I overheard the latter end of an argument. One voice was Len’s, the other a neighbor’s.

“A tater’s a tater, anyhow,” the neighbor was affirming.

“You might as well say a woman’s a woman,” came the retort from Len.

“Well, ain’t she?” said the neighbor.

“Lord, no!” said Len, with contempt freely flowing.

“Oh, course there ain’t nobody like Reenie. Pity the Lord didn’t think o’ makin’ her fer Adam. We’d all be in Eden yit, loaferin’ by the river of life, ’stead o’ diggin’ taters out o’ rocks.”

“When you’re spilin’ to talk about a woman, Dan Goforth, you needn’t travel furder’n your own doorstep,” answered Len, his voice, like drawling fire, creeping on without pause. “Reenie mayn’t be stout enough to wear out a hoe-handle, but she’s never jowerin’ when I come in, ’n’ there’s always a clean place in the house big enough fer me to set my cheer down in, I ain’t layin’ up much more’n debts, but they’s easy carried when nobody’s naggin’ yer strenth out, a woman’s smile ain’t no oak-tree in harvest-time, but it’s jest as good to set by, my coat’s raggeder’n yourn, but I’d ruther Reenie ’ud lose her needle onct on a while than her temper all the time, neighbors can go by my house day or night an’ never hear no fire aspittin’, which kain’t be said o’ yourn, an’ you scootle from here, Dan Goforth; don’t you tech nary nuther tater in this patch!”

The neighbor scootled, backward it seemed, to the road. I took the trouble myself to go down to a trail and come up casually from another direction, in full view of Len. He was working mightily, digging up a hill with two strokes of his hoe.

“Dan gone?” I asked indifferently.

“Ay, he lit out. Old Nance wanted him, I reckon. He dassen’t stay a minute after she fixes the clock fer him.”

“That’s a kind of trouble you and Reenie don’t have.”

“You’ve said it now. Reenie don’t keep no time on me. If I want to drap over the mountain to see if I can git old man Diller’s mule fer extry ploughin’, ’cause the crab-grass is elbowin’ along the ground ’most rootin’ up my corn, an’ tells Reenie I’ll be back by twelve, an’ I find the old man spilin’ a ox-yoke, an’ I shapes it up fer him an’ stays to dinner, an’ comes back by the meetin’-house where they’s puttin’ in the new windows an’ not gittin’ ’em plumb, an’ I stays till sundown settin’ ’em in so they won’t make everybody ’at passes think he’s gone cross-eyed, an’ I remembers we’ve got no coffee, so I slips round by the store an’ stays till dark talkin’ with Tim Frizbie about the best way to grow fat corn an’ lean cobs, ’cause I know you want me to git all the new idies I can, an’ when I strikes Granny Groom’s place she’s at the gate wantin’ me to talk to her Lizy’s girl who’s fixin’ to leave an’ strollop over the country, an’ I says to that girl when you’re at home you’re eatin’ welcome bread, and when you’re out in the world you don’t know what you’re eatin’, an’ a lot more that was aplenty, an’s I pass Mis’ Woodlow’s, who’s got a powerful bad risin’, I thinks I’ll stop an’ see if her jaw’s broke yit, an’ I finds ol’ Jim so out o’ heart about her, I stays to help him put over a couple o’ hours, an’ when I walks in home about midnight, Reenie she’s gone to bed sensible, an’ says there’s bread an’ beans in the cupboard. Now that’s what I call some comfort to a man, to know he can take what happens ’long the road, an’ know his wife ain’t frettin’ till her stomach’s gone an’ she’s as lean as a splinter like ol’ Nance Goforth.”

“You nearly got what you wanted when you married, didn’t you, Len?”

“Well, I reckon, but I didn’t know it from the start-off. Reenie was powerful to be agoin’, an’ I couldn’t git used to draggin’ off every Saturday night to stay till Monday mornin’. But I felt different about it after I’d nearly killed her an’ the baby.”

“Gracious, was it that bad?”

“I didn’t do it a-purpose. It was back in Madison, where I married Reenie, an’ jest two days ’fore Christmas. She’d put in to go to her pap’s, an’ I thought I’d git up a nice lot o’ wood, make me a big fire, an’ have my Christmas at home. I’d told her I thought she’d feel different about stayin’ in her own house after she’d got a little ’un in it, but she ’lowed her sight an’ hearin’ was as good as ’fore she had a baby, an’ she could enjoy usin’ ’em just the same. So I got out by good daylight an’ went up the hill above the house to cut a big, dead chestnut that I was tired o’ lookin’ at; then I means to slip over to By Kenny’s an’ git him an’ his wife to come over fer Christmas ’fore Reenie got away. There’d come a skift o’ snow a few days back, bare enough to make the ground gray, then a little warm rain, an’ on top o’ that a freeze that stung yer eyeballs, an’ you never saw anything as slick as that hill was ’fore the sun riz that mornin’. When my chestnut fell she crackled off every limb agin the hard ground clean as a sled-runner. Boys, if she didn’t shoot off, makin’ smoke out o’ that frost! I saw she was pinted fer our little shack an’ I tries to yell to Reenie to git out, but I never made more’n a peep like a chicken. When the log struck, it shaved by the corner o’ the house an’ took the chimbly. Boys, it made bug-bites o’ that chimbly! I knowed Reenie was settin’ by the fire with the baby, an’ I’d killed ’em both. I felt ’most froze to the ground, an’ I thought if Reenie was only livin’ I’d let her do her own ’druthers the rest of her days. An’ when I got down to the house an’ sees her an’ the baby not hurt, with the rocks all piled around ’em, I says to myself I ain’t ever goin’ back on what I promised her unbeknownst. An’ I ain’t.”

“What was she doing?”

“She was jest settin’ there.”

“What did she say?”

“She ’lowed we’d got to go to pap’s fer Christmas. An’ we did.”