Эллен Глазгоу - Barren Ground

"I've come back to help take care of you, Pa."

His lips quivered, and she apprehended rather than heard what he said.

"I'm glad to see you again, daughter."

Dropping into the chair by the bedside, she laid her arms gently about him. "You don't suffer, do you?"

How immeasurably far away he seemed! How futile was any endeavour to reach him! Then she remembered that he had always been far away, that he had always stood just outside the circle in which they lived, as if he were a member of some affectionate but inarticulate animal kingdom.

He tried to smile, but the effort only accentuated the crooked line of his mouth.

"No, I don't suffer." For a moment he was silent; then he added in an almost inaudible tone: "It's sort of restful."

A leaden weight of tears fell on her heart. Not his death, but his life seemed to her more than she could bear. What was her pain, her wretchedness, compared to his monotony of toil? What was any pain, any wretchedness, compared to the emptiness of his life?

For a little while she talked on cheerfully, telling him of the lectures she had heard and the books she had read, and of all the plans she had made to help him with the farm.

"I've borrowed some money to start with, and we'll make something of it yet, Pa," she said brightly.

His lips moved, but she could not understand what he said. Straining her ears, she bent over him. For an instant it seemed to her that his tone became clearer, and that he was on the point of speaking aloud; then the struggle ceased, and he lay looking at her with his expression of mute resignation.

After this, though she tried to interest him in her plans, she saw that his attention was beginning to wander. Every now and then he made an effort to follow her, while a bewildered expression crept into his face; but it was only for a minute at a time that he could fix his mind on what she was saying, and when the strain became too great for him, his gaze wandered to the open window and the harp-shaped pine, which towered, dark as night, against the morning blue of the sky.

"Well, I'll go to breakfast now," she said, as carelessly as she could. "Ma has it ready for me."

Rising from her chair, she stood looking down on him with misty eyes. After all, the pathos of life was worse than the tragedy. "Is the light too strong?" she asked, as she turned away. "Shall I close one of the shutters?"

At first he did not follow her, his thoughts had roved so far away, and she repeated her question in another form. "Does the sun hurt your eyes?"

A smile wrung his lips. "No, I like to see the big pine," he answered; and stealing out noiselessly, she left him alone with the tree and the sky.

In the kitchen her mother stood over her while she ate, watching every mouthful with the eyes of repressed and hungry devotion.

"You ain't so plump as you were, Dorinda, but you've kept your high colour."

"Oh, I'm well enough, but you look worn out, Ma."

Mrs. Oakley hurried to the stove and back again. "Let me give you another slice of bacon. You must be empty after that long trip. Well, of course, I've had a good deal on me since your father got sick. Until Fluvanna came, I didn't have anybody but Elvira to help me, and though she was willing to do what she could, her fingers were all thumbs when it came to making up a bed or moving things in a sick-room."

"I can take most of the burden off you now. You know I learned a good deal about illness when I was with Doctor Faraday."

"Yes, you'll be a comfort, I know, but you're going back again as soon as your father begins to mend, ain't you?"

Dorinda shook her head with a smile, which, she told herself, looked braver than it felt. "No, I'm not going back. I'd sooner stay here and try to make something out of the farm. A thousand acres of land ought not to be allowed to run to broomsedge like an old field."

"Heaven knows we've tried, daughter. Nobody ever worked harder than your father, and whatever came of it?"

"Poor Pa. I know, but he came after the war when there wasn't any money or any labourers."

She told of the money Doctor Faraday would lend her, and of the hotel in Washington which would take all the butter she could make. "But it must be as good as the best," she explained, with a laugh. "I'm going over to Green Acres to buy seven Jersey cows. Seven is a lucky number for me, so I am going to start with it."

"You'll have to have some help, then."

"Not at first. Of course I'll need a boy for the barnyard, but I am going to do the milking and all the work of the dairy myself. You can help me with the skimming until we get a separator, and when Fluvanna isn't waiting on Pa, she can lend a hand at the churning."

Mrs. Oakley shook her head drearily. "You haven't tried it, Dorinda."

"I know I haven't, but I'm going to. I learned a lot in the hospital, and the chief thing was that it is slighting that has ruined us, white and black alike, in the South. Hasn't Fluvanna got a brother Nimrod that I could hire?" she asked more definitely.

"Yes, and he's a good boy too. Fluvanna had him over here one day last week chopping wood when Rufus was out in the field ploughing. That's a thrifty family, the Moodys. I never saw a darkey that had as much vim as Fluvanna. And she belongs to the new order too. I always thought it spoiled them to learn to read and write till I hired her. She's got all the sense Aunt Mehitable had, and she's picked up some education besides. I declare, she talks better than a lot of white people I know."

"I wonder if she'd stay on and help me with the farm?" Dorinda asked. "I mean," she added, while her face clouded, "after Pa is up again." Though she knew that her father would never be up again, she united with her mother in evading the fact.

"Oh, I'm sure she will," Mrs. Oakley responded, with eagerness. "She has been helping me with my white Leghorns. All the hens are laying well. I am setting Eva and Ida now."

"You didn't have them when I was here."

"No, Juliet hatched them. You remember Juliet? She was the first white Leghorn hen I ever had."

"Yes, I remember her. Have you got her still?"

Mrs. Oakley sighed. "No, a coon broke into the henhouse last winter and killed her. She was a good hen, if I ever had one." It was amazing to Dorinda the way her mother knew every fowl on the place by name. To be sure, there were only a dozen or so; but these white Leghorns all looked exactly alike to the girl, though Mrs. Oakley could tell each one at a distance and was intimately acquainted with the peculiarities of every rooster and hen that she owned.

"I'd like to get a hundred and fifty white Leghorns, if we could look after them," Dorinda said thoughtfully. "That's one good way to make money."

A ray of light, which was less a flush than a warmer pallor, flickered across Mrs. Oakley's wan features. While her mother's interest was awakening, Dorinda felt that her own was slowly drugged by the poverty of her surroundings. The sunlight bathing the ragged lawn only intensified the aspect of destitution. Colour, diversity, animation, all these were a part of the world she had relinquished. Pushing her chair away from the table, she went to the back door and stood gazing out over the woodpile in the direction of the well-house. A few cultivated acres in the midst of an encroaching waste land! From the broomsedge and the flat horizon, loneliness rose and washed over her. Loneliness, nothing more! The same loneliness that she had feared and hated as a child; the same loneliness from which she had tried to escape in flights of emotion. Food, work, sleep, that was life as her father and mother had known it, and that life was to be hers in the future. For an instant it seemed to her that she must break down. Then, lifting her head with a characteristic gesture of defiance, she turned back into the room. "I'd better start straight about it," she said aloud, smiling at Mrs. Oakley's startled look.