Эллен Глазгоу - Barren Ground

That afternoon she harnessed Molly, the new mare, to the buggy, and accompanied by Ranger, son of Rambler, drove over to Honeycomb Farm.

"I want a dress to wear to church," she said to Miss Seena, "something good that will last."

"Then you're going to church again? I must say it is time." Rawboned, wintry, rheumatic, the dressmaker was still an authority.

"The roads were so bad." To her surprise, Dorinda found herself becoming apologetic. "I couldn't take the teams out on Sundays, but I've bought a chestnut mare for my own use, and I'll begin going again."

"Well, I'm glad you ain't a confirmed backslider. What sort of material had you thought of?"

Dorinda reflected. "Something handsome. Silk-no, satin. That shines more."

"Why don't you order it out of a catalogue? My fingers have got so stiff I've had to give up sewin' the last few months. They put everything in catalogues now." Miss Seena selected one from the pile on the table and opened it as she spoke. "You'll want blue, I reckon. You were always partial to blue."

Dorinda frowned. "No, not blue. Any colour but blue."

"I thought you favoured it. Do you recollect the dress I bought to match yo' eyes one spring when you were a girl? My, but you did look well in it!"

"Isn't there any other colour worn?"

"Well, there's brown. The fashion books speak highly of brown this year. Black's real stylish too. With yo' bright complexion black ought to go mighty well. You'd better order this model. It is the newest style." She pointed to a picture which seemed to Dorinda to be the extreme of fashion. "Them box pleats and pointed basques is the latest thing. I reckon you'll have to get a new corset," she concluded sharply, looking the girl up and down. "These styles don't set well unless they're worn over a straight font."

"Then I'll get one." Dorinda was prepared for any discomfort. "And I need a coat-and a hat, a big one with a feather."

"You want a willow-plume. They're all the rage this season, and a long coat of seal plush. There're some handsome ones in the front of that catalogue. Seal plush is goin' to be mo' worn than fur, all the fashion books say."

After the choice was made and the letter written by the cramped fingers of the dressmaker, Dorinda drove home consoled by the discovery that crow's-feet make, after all, less difference than clothes in one's happiness, Strange how a little thing like a new dress could lift up one's spirits! Her changed mood persisted until she approached the fork of the road and saw a woman's figure against the dying flare of the sun. As she reached the spot, the woman came down into the middle of the road, and she recognized Geneva Greylock.

"I want to talk to you, Dorinda," Geneva began, with a trill of laughter. "Won't you stop and listen?"

She was wearing a thin summer dress, though the air was sharp, and round her waist she had tied a faded blue sash with streamers which blew out in the wind. Her face, in its masklike immobility, resembled the face of a dead woman. Only her gleaming flaxen hair was alive.

"I'm afraid it's too late," Dorinda replied as pleasantly as she could. "Supper will be waiting, and besides you ought not to be out in that dress. You will catch your death of cold."

Geneva shook her head, while that expressionless laughter trickled in a stream from her lips. "I'm not cold," she answered. "I'm so happy that I must talk to somebody. It is our wedding anniversary, and I'm obliged to tell somebody how blissfully happy we are. Jason went to sleep right after dinner, and he hasn't waked up yet, so I had to come out and find somebody to talk to. I've got a secret that nobody knows, not even Jason."

So it was the same thing over again! Her eyes looked as if they would leap out of her head, they were so staring and famished. "I'll tell you what I'll do," Dorinda responded, her voice softened by pity. "If you'll get into the buggy, I'll drive you down to Gooseneck Creek. That will be halfway home." This was what marriage to Jason had brought, and yet there had been a time when she would have given her life to have been married to him for a single year.

"Oh, will you?" Geneva sprang up on the step and into the buggy. She was so thin that her bones seemed to rattle as she moved, and there were hollows in her chest and between her shoulder blades. "Then I can tell you my secret."

"I wouldn't if I were you. I've got to keep an eye on the road, so I can't talk."

For a few minutes Geneva rambled on in her strained voice as if she had not heard her. Then pausing, she asked abruptly, "Why did you never like me, Dorinda? I always wanted to be friends with you."

"I like you. I do like you."

Geneva shook her head. "You never liked me because you loved Jason. Jason jilted you." She broke into her cracked laugh again. "You don't know, but there are worse things than being jilted."

Anger flamed up in Dorinda's heart, but it died down before she allowed herself to reply. "I suppose there are," she said at last. "That was long ago, anyhow. So long that it doesn't matter what happened." Poor demented creature, she thought, how many months would it be before they put her away?

Suddenly Geneva leaned toward her and began to whisper so rapidly that Dorinda could scarcely follow her words. "If I tell you my secret, will you promise never to repeat it? When you hear it, you will know there are worse things than being jilted. I had a baby, and Jason killed it. He killed it as soon as it was born and buried it in the garden. He doesn't know that I saw him. He thinks that I was asleep, but I found the grave under the lilac bushes at the end of the garden path. Now, we are going to have another baby, and I'm afraid he will kill this one too. That's why I pretend to be so blissfully happy. Blissfully happy," she cried out in a high voice as she jumped over the wheel before the buggy came to a stop. Yes, they would probably have to send her away very soon. "I wish I had been kinder to her when I had the chance," Dorinda thought, as she turned the mare toward home.

The next Sunday afternoon she asked Nathan for news of Geneva. It was easy for her to speak of the Greylocks now since that dreadful encounter had obliterated even the memory of jealousy.

"Every six months or so she's taken like that," Nathan answered. "Then she goes clean out of her head; but they say it isn't as bad as the moping in between the attacks."

"Is there nothing that can be done?"

"Oh, they'll have to put her away, sooner or later. Her father has tried his best to get her to leave Jason, but she won't hear of it when she's in her right mind. Once he took her home while she was deranged and kept her in a room with barred windows. It didn't last, however, and as soon as she came to her senses, she insisted on going back to Jason. They lead a cat-and-dog life together, and when she is out of her head she runs about telling everybody that she had a child and he murdered it."

"Poor thing," said Dorinda. "She told me too."

"That's when she's crazy. As soon as she gets her senses again, you can't make her leave him."

For a few minutes Dorinda was silent. When she spoke it was to remark irrelevantly, "How little human beings know what is best for them."

"I didn't understand what you said, Dorinda."

"No matter. I was only thinking aloud."

It was a mellow October afternoon, and around them the fields were resting after a fair harvest. As far as she could see, east, north, west, the land belonged to her. Only toward the south there were the pale green willows of Gooseneck Creek, and beyond the feathery edge she saw the red chimneys of Five Oaks. But for those chimneys she would have felt that the whole horizon was hers!

"They say Five Oaks will come under the hammer before long." Nathan's gaze also was on the red smears in the sky. "It's mortgaged now for as much as it'll ever bring, and there's trouble about the taxes."