Эллен Глазгоу - Barren Ground

"Yes, I covered her up. Nimrod had some whiskey and he was going to make a hot toddy." John Abner shivered in the icy draught that crept in through the loose window-sashes. "Hadn't you better lie down?" he asked, turning back to the fire. "It won't be long now."

She shook her head. "That coffee will keep me awake. Lie down on the couch, and I'll listen for Elisha. I drew up the shades, so he will know we haven't gone to bed."

For a few minutes he resisted her, his eyes blinking in the firelight while he struggled to bite back a yawn. Then he gave up and flung himself down on the big soft couch. "It would take something stronger than coffee to keep me awake to-night," he said. "If I drop off, will you wake me?"

"If there is any news. But you will hear Elisha when he comes." He laughed drowsily. "I believe I could sleep straight through Judgment Day."

Taking the quilt from the bed, she covered him carefully from head to foot. As she tucked him in, she remembered her wedding-night when she had found Nathan asleep on the couch in front of the fire. "If he hadn't been like that, I couldn't have stood him," she thought.

Sinking into the easiest chair by the flames, she picked up the sock she had partly darned in the afternoon. Then, observing that the lamp was shining in John Abner's face, she lowered the wick and folding the sock, replaced it in her work-basket. The chair creaked gently as she rocked, and fearing the noise might disturb him, she sat motionless, with her eyes on the hickory logs and her foot touching the neck of the pointer.

While she sat there she recalled, with one of the irresponsible flashes of memory which revived only when she was inactive, the afternoon when she had waited in the dripping woods to see Jason drive home with Geneva. She was a girl then; now she was a woman and middle-aged; yet there was an intolerable quality in all suspense which made it alike. Compared to those moments, this waiting was as the dead to the living agony. "Suppose I had married Jason and he was on that train, could I sit here like this?" she asked herself. "Suppose I had married Jason instead of Nathan, would marriage have been different?"

Then, because the question was useless and she had no room for useless things in her practical mind, she put it sternly away from her, and rising, slipped into her coat and went out of the house. Closing the door softly, she passed out on the porch and down the frozen steps to the lawn. The snow was slippery in thin places, and she knew that Elisha would try to keep to the road where the deep drifts were less dangerous. Advancing cautiously, she moved in the direction of the gate, but she had gone only a few steps when she saw Elisha's old spring-wagon rolling over the bridge. Quickening her steps dangerously, she ran over the slippery ground.

"I've kept some hot coffee for you, Uncle Elisha. Can't you come into the kitchen and get something to eat?"

"Naw'm, I reckon I'd better be gittin' erlong home. My ole grey mare, she's had jes' about enuff er dis yeah wedder, en she's kinder hankerin' fur de stable."

"We can keep her here. There's plenty of room in the stable, and you can spend the night with Ebenezer."

"Thanky, Miss Dorindy, bofe un us sutney would be glad uv er spell er res'. My son Jasper, he's on dat ar train dat's done been stalled down de track, an' I'se gwine out agin about'n sunup."

"Have they heard anything yet?" asked Dorinda, while the wagon crawled over the snags of roots in the direction of the stable.

Elisha shook his muffled head. "Dey don' know nuttin', Miss Dorindy, dat's de Gospel trufe, dey don' know nuttin' 'tall. Dar's a train done come down Pom de Norf, en hit's gwine on wid whatevah dey could git abo'd hit. Hi! Dey's got axes erlong, en I 'low dar ain' nary a one un um dat kin handle an axe like my Jasper."

"I'm afraid it's a bad wreck," Dorinda said uneasily.

"Yas'm, dar's a wreck somewhar, sho' 'nuff, but dey don' know nuttin' out dar at de station. All de wires is down, ev'y las' one un um, en dar ain' nobody done come erlong back dat went down de road. Ef'n you'll lemme res' de night heah, me en de mare'll go out agin befo' sunup."

"There's all the room in the world, Uncle Elisha. Wait, and I'll give you a lantern to take to the stable." She went indoors and returned in a few minutes with a light swinging from her hand. "As soon as you've attended to your mare, come in and I'll have something for you to eat."

As she passed her bedroom on the way to the kitchen she saw that John Abner was still sleeping, and she did not stop to arouse him. Why should she disturb his slumber when there was nothing definite that she could tell him? Instead, she hastened about her preparations for Elisha's supper, and by the time the old negro came in from bedding the mare, the bacon and eggs were on the table. Withdrawing to a safe distance from the stove, he thawed his frostbitten hands and feet, while his grizzled head emerged like some gigantic caterpillar from the chrysalis of shawls he had wound about him.

"Were there many people at the station?" she inquired presently.

"Naw'm, hit was too fur fur mos' folks. Marse John Garlick, he wuz spendin' de night in de sto', en so was Marse Jim Ellgood. Young Marse Bob en his wife wuz bofe un um on de train."

"Well, make a good supper. Then you can go up to Ebenezer's. I saw smoke coming out of his chimney, so it will be warm there."

Because she knew that he would enjoy his supper more if he were permitted to eat it alone, she went back to the fire in her bedroom where John Abner was still sleeping. She watched there in the silence until she heard Elisha exclaim, "Good night, Miss Dorindy!" and go out, shutting the back door behind him. Then she locked up the house, and after lowering the wick of the hall lamp, touched John Abner on the shoulder.

"You'd better go to bed. In a little while you will have to be up again."

He opened his eyes and sat up, blinking at the firelight. "I could have slept on into next week."

"Well, don't wake up. Go straight upstairs."

"Did Elisha ever come?"

"Yes, he put his mare in the stable and went up to spend the night with Ebenezer."

"What did he tell you?"

"Only that they haven't found out anything definite at the station. You know how cut off everything is when the wires are down. Mr. Garlick and James Ellgood are both waiting out there all night."

"Then it was Father's train. It must have been a bad wreck."

"I'm afraid so. This suspense is so baffling. Anything in the world might happen, and we shouldn't know of it until the next day."

Her face was pale and drawn, and while she spoke, she shivered, not from cold but from anxiety. She saw John Abner glance quickly toward the front window and she knew that he, like herself, was feeling all the terror of primitive isolation. How did people stand it when they were actually cut off by the desert or the frozen North from communication with their kind?

"You know now what it must have been like in the old days before we had the telegraph and the telephone," she said. "Pedlar's Mill was scarcely more than a stopping place in the wilderness, and my mother would be shut in for days without a sign from the outer world."

"I never thought of it before," said John Abner, "but it must have been pretty rough on her. The roads were no better than frozen bogs, so she couldn't get anywhere if she wanted to."

"That was why she got her mania for work. The winter loneliness; she said, was more than she could endure without losing her mind. She had to move about to make company for herself. There were weeks at a time, she told me once, when the roads were so bad that nobody went by, not even Mr. Garlick, or an occasional negro. During the war the trains stopped running on this branch road, and afterwards there were only two trains passing a day."