Эллен Глазгоу - Barren Ground

"And with the dairy too. The ice melts so fast I can't keep the butter firm."

She leaned back, breathing in the scent of his pipe. The protective feeling, so closely akin to tenderness, which had awakened in her heart at Five Oaks, had not entirely vanished, and she felt nearer to her husband, sitting there in the moonlight of her thoughts, than she had felt since her marriage. Even that moment at Five Oaks when Jason had laughed at him had not brought him so close. She longed to tell him this because she knew how much the knowledge of it would mean to him; yet she could find no words delicate enough to convey this new sense of his importance in her life. The only words at her command were those that had struggled in her mind over at Five Oaks: "He is worth twenty of Jason," and these were not words that could be spoken aloud.

"There goes a shooting star!" Nathan exclaimed suddenly out of the stillness.

"And another," she added, after a brief silence.

"I wonder what becomes of them," he continued presently. "When you stop to think of it, it's odd what becomes of everything. It makes the universe seem like a scrap-heap."

She left the hammock and sat down on the step at his feet. "That reminds me of all the trash over at Five Oaks. What in the world can we do with it? Doesn't that screech owl sound as if he were close by us."

"Well, we'll have to put a manager on that farm, I reckon. We can't look after both farms and make anything of them. I never heard so many tree-frogs as we've had this summer. What with the locusts and the katydids you can't hear yourself talk. But it's right pleasant sitting here like this, ain't it?"

"Yes, it's pleasant." She tried to say something affectionate and gave up the effort. "I like to think that Five Oaks belongs to us." Her accent on the "us" was the best that she could do in the matter of sentiment; yet she was sure that he understood her mood and was touched by its gentleness.

They talked until late, planning changes in the old farm and improvements in the new one. It was an evening that she liked to remember as long as she lived. Whenever she looked back on it afterwards, it seemed to lie there like a fertile valley in the arid monotony of her life.

For the next few years she gave herself completely to Five Oaks. Only by giving herself, completely, only by enriching the land with her abundant vitality, could she hope to restore the farm. Reclaiming the abandoned fields had become less a reasonable purpose than a devouring passion in her mind and heart. Old Farm was managed by Nathan now, and since he had let his own place to a thrifty German tenant, he had, as Dorinda frequently reminded him, "all the time in the world on his hands." The dairy work, which had prospered when three trains a day were run between Washington and the South, still remained under her supervision; but all the hours that she could spare were spent on the freshly ploughed acres of Five Oaks. Over these acres she toiled as resolutely as the pioneer must have toiled when he snatched a home from the wilderness. Though she had installed Martin Flower in the house, she had rejected Nathan's idea of letting the farm "on shares" to the tenant. This was the only disagreement she had ever had with Nathan, and he had yielded at last to the habit of, command which had fastened upon her. As she grew older she clung to authority as imperiously as a king who refuses to abdicate. There were moments in these years when, arrested by some sudden check on her arrogance, she stopped to wonder if any man less confirmed in humility than Nathan could have stood her as a wife. But, immediately afterwards, she would reflect, with the faint bitterness which still flavoured her opinion of love, that if she had married another man, he might not have found her overbearing.

Though the gentleness of mood which had stolen over her that August evening had not entirely departed, it lingered above the bare reason of her mind as a tender flush might linger over the austere pattern of the landscape. After that evening she had drawn no nearer to her husband, yet she had felt no particular impulse to stand farther away. Their association had touched its highest point in the soft darkness of that night, and she knew that they could never again reach the peak of consciousness together. But the quiet friendliness of their intercourse was not disturbed by Dorinda's interest in Five Oaks; and when, after a longer pursuit and a fiercer capture than usual, Lena finally married young Jim Ellgood, the days at Old Farm assumed the aspect of bright serenity which passes so often for happiness. Though Dorinda was not happy in the old thrilling sense of the word, she drifted, as middle age wore on, into a philosophy of acquiescence. John Abner was still her favourite companion, and he' shared her ardent interest in Five Oaks. In time, she hoped he would marry some girl whom she herself should select, and that they would live with their children at Old Farm. When she suggested this to Nathan, he chuckled under his breath.

"It wouldn't surprise me if he wanted his head when he comes to marrying," he observed.

"Of course you think I am high-handed," she rejoined.

"Well, it don't make any difference to me what you are. And as long as you can manage me," he added, "you needn't worry about not keeping your hand in."

"It's for your own good anyway," she retorted. "You're too easygoing with everybody."

"I know it, honey. I ain't complaining."

He was refilling his pipe from his shabby old pouch of tobacco, and while he prodded the bowl with his thumb, he lifted his eyes and looked at her with his sheepish smile.

"I heard 'em talking about Jason Greylock yesterday at the store," he said.

She made a gesture of aversion. "What did they say?"

"Not much that I can recollect. Only that he is too lazy to come for his mail. He has buried himself in that house in the woods across Whippernock River, and he sometimes lets a whole month go by without coming to the post office."

"Perhaps he hasn't any way of getting over."

"He's still got his horse and buggy. I doubt if he's really as poor as he makes out. He hires Aunt Mehaley Plumtree to cook for him and look after the poultry. She comes every morning and stays till dark."

"To think of coming down to that after Five Oaks!"

"Well, the country goes against you when you ain't cut out for a farmer. Since the old man brought him back from the North, I reckon Jason has had a hard row to hoe."

"He wasn't obliged to stay here," she observed scornfully.

"No, but he was always too easy-going. A pleasant enough fellow when he was a boy; but soon ripe, soon rotten."

"Oh, I give it up." Dorinda was untying her apron while she answered. "He isn't worth all the time we've wasted talking about him."

"Good Lord, Dorinda! You haven't been sitting here ten minutes."

"Well, ten minutes will pick a bushel, as Ebenezer says. They are waiting for me over at Five. Oaks."

This was the secret of her contentment, she knew, breathless activity. If she was satisfied with her life, it was only because she never stopped long enough in her work to imagine the kind of life she should have preferred. While her health was good and her energy unimpaired, she had no time for discontent. If she had looked for it, she sometimes told herself, she could have found sufficient cause for unhappiness; but she was careful not to look for it.

In these years there were brief periods when her old dreams awakened. Beauty that seemed too fugitive to be real was still more a torment than a delight to her. The moon rising over the harp-shaped pine; the shocked corn against the red sunsets of autumn; the mulberry-coloured twilights of winter;-while she watched these things the past would glow again with the fitful incandescence of memory. But the inner warmth died with the external beauty, and she dismissed the longing as weakness. "You know where that sort of thing leads you," she would tell herself sternly. "Three months of love, and you pay for it with all the rest of your life."