Contrary to Lizzie May's predictions and somewhat to her disappointment, Judith failed to suffer from the marital troubles that increasingly vexed her own life. Jerry proved to be, at least according to Lizzie May's standards, a much better husband than Dan. He did not care for the sport of fox hunting, so there were no hounds to bay around the house at night and greedily lick of the corn meal that could ill be spared. He never went anywhere in the evenings, and he had not been drunk a dozen times in his life. Lizzie May had to admit to herself that Judy, the wild and harum-scarum, who was capable of almost any foolishness, had made a much more sensible choice than she. But of course it was nothing but luck, she told herself. She felt in a vague, half acknowledged way that she had a quite justifiable complaint to make against the powers that be because chance had favored the irresponsible instead of meting out just reward to the careful and prudent. This did not mean that she would have been willing to exchange Dan for Jerry. She would have scorned such an opportunity. Dan was Dan. He was the man who had courted her. He was hers. But she would have liked to borrow some of Jerry's qualities and insert them craftily into Dan's character, making him over into a husband more contributory to her comfort and convenience.
All that summer, in spite of the toil of the field, Judith was joyous and radiant. And she worked hard. She could not take the matter of earning a living as seriously as did Jerry; but she caught some of the infection of his ambition to raise big crops and lay by money for a home of their own. So she worked in the corn and tobacco as determinedly as he, stopping only to cook their simple meals and wash up the few dishes, with an occasional day off for washing clothes. Besides helping Jerry in the field, she looked after her chickens and turkeysand made a kitchen garden near the house in which she raised beets, cabbages, beans, tomatoes, and other vegetables to take away the curse of bareness from their table.
The first big job of the season came in May. This was the tobacco setting. Late in February Jerry had made the tobacco bed. It was nine feet by sixty feet and it lay in a sheltered hollow sloping gently to the south. To kill the weed seeds Jerry had burnt the bed by covering it with old fence rails and setting them on fire. Then he had raked the ashes into the ground and made the earth as fine and smooth as sand. Into this he had sowed the small, almost microscopic seed, had tramped it well into the ground and spread over the whole a tightly stretched covering of cheesecloth to protect the young plants from wind and frost. According to the custom of tenant farmers' wives in the tobacco country, Judith had planted on the edges seed of tomatoes, peppers, and cabbages to make plants for the home garden.
It was a dry spring that year, and Jerry had had to work hard to keep the plants alive. Again and again, after his day's work was done, he had trudged to and fro between the nearest spring and the tobacco bed carrying big buckets of water to the thirsty young plants. Jerry found to his dismay that it took a great many buckets of water to wet a nine by sixty bed. At last in late April there came several days of gently falling warm rain and the plants took on new life. By the middle of May they were lush and lusty and ready to be set when the right weather conditions arrived.
The big rain came the last week in May, bringing the much desired "season." Little showers had fallen from time to time, but they were not enough to wet the ground deeply. Jerry was beginning to grow uneasy and had been scanning the weather signs with an anxious eye for many days. On the evening of the twenty-fifth, as he drove his horses up from the field where he had been cultivating corn, the sun sank behind an opaque wall of sickly yellow cloud. Looking about Jerry saw the sky overcast in every direction with a uniform pale gray. Birds flew low under the heavy gray canopy. Thewhistle and rumble of a train several miles away sounded distinct through the still, brooding air; and as he walked along the top of the ridge behind the horses he heard twice the harsh cry of a woodpecker.
"We'll have a terbacker settin' rain afore mornin', Judy," he said, when she came out to help him put up the horses. "Everything says so."
Before they went to bed that night the rain began. Jerry went out and fixed the drain of the eaves trough so that the water would run into the cistern. The next morning it was still coming down in a warm, steady downpour. All day it fell in the same soft, gently-falling stream, like a blessing upon mankind, not from a self-centered Hebrew deity, but from some sweet natured and generous pagan god.
"Bejasus, this'll fetch things along, Judy," said Jerry, who was busily nailing soles on Judith's shoes beside the kitchen window. "Land, haow everything'll pick up after this rain! I sholy do love to see things grow in spring. An' about to-morrow afternoon we kin go to settin'."
The next morning dawned blue and warm, full of birdsong and the scent of wet growing things. The ground was dank with rain, but by afternoon Jerry thought it would be dry enough to begin setting. After breakfast he went to the tobacco bed to pull plants and Judith got on one of the horses and rode over to her father's to get Elmer to come and "drop." As the horse trotted along the top of the ridge and out onto the sodden "pike" full of puddles, she breathed deep of the fragrant air, felt the sun's warmth on her back and shoulders and almost fancied that she was a plant that had sucked in the life-giving rain and was preparing to raise its blossom to the sun.
She returned before long with Elmer, now grown into a loutish chunk of fourteen, all hands and feet and appetite. Elmer rode upon Pete, a young mule that Bill had bought to take the place of Bob, who had died the year before of old age. Pete was of a rich chestnut color, glossy, handsome, and liquid-eyed. He was also intelligent with the super-equineintelligence of a mule. He had a way of laying back his ears ever so slightly and looking at any one who approached him with a backward-sidewise glance of mingled playfulness and suspicion. It made Judith laugh to see him do this.
"Land, Elmer," she exclaimed, as they were putting up the horse and mule in the shed, "if that critter, Pete, hain't got the look of Uncle Sam Whitmarsh, I never seen two folks that looks alike. Uncle Sam has got jes that same way o' lookin' at you sharp an' sidewise an' yet smilin', as though he kinda suspicioned that you was a-tryin' to git the best of him, an' yet he wanted to be good friends an' have some fun with you too. An' if Uncle Sam could move his ears I'm sure he'd lay 'em back jes a little. They say animals can't smile. But if that mule hain't a-smilin' then what is he a-doin'?"
She patted his glossy neck admiringly. He flicked his ears and looked at her in his characteristic way, then poked his soft nose into her face.
"He's durn hard to ketch up in paster," grunted Elmer. "You come up alongside of him with the bridle, an' he gives you that 'ere look, an' fust thing you know he's a quarter of a mile off. My legs is run clean off since we got him."
After dinner the tobacco setting began. Elmer had the easy job. With a basket of plants on his arm he went along the rows that Jerry had laid off with the plow and dropped the plants at intervals of about eighteen inches, dropping two rows at a time. Jerry and Judith followed behind, each taking a row, and set the plants in the ground. They worked at first with their fingers, until the skin began to wear away. Then Jerry whittled two round, sharp-pointed sticks, and they used these instead of the fingers. With the sharp stick they made a hole in the wet earth, set the plant into it and pressed the earth down about the roots with their fingers.
At first they went along the rows gaily, rallying each other and trying to see which could work the fastest. Sometimes Jerry would get a little ahead and look back teasingly. Then Judith would make her fingers fly and outstrip him and laugh back at him from under her big blue sunbonnet. They soonstopped this, however, and fell into the regular, clockwork routine of those who go through the same set of motions many hundreds of times over, only now and then standing erect for a moment to straighten their cramped legs and ease their aching backs. Very soon they had no energy left to laugh or even talk and plodded along the rows doggedly, silently, seeing only the wet ground and the plants that were to be put into it. The muscles of their legs grew sore and strained from the unusual exercise of constantly kneeling and rising, kneeling and rising. The ache in their backs became sometimes unbearable; and the backs of their necks, held always at tension and beat upon by the hot sun, throbbed with a dull, continual pain. The moisture rising from the soaked ground made the heat heavy and enervating. Their hands cracked and stiffened. The wet clay stuck in layer after layer to their heavy work shoes until they found it hard to lift their feet, and had to stop often to scrape away the caked mud. Elmer, who was barefoot, got along much better. When the strain of constant bending became unendurable and they stood up for relief, the earth swam about them and for a moment everything turned black. They reeled, righted themselves, and went at it again.
They drank enormous quantities of water. Elmer, who was not kept so busy as the other two, had the job of bringing water from the spring in an earthenware molasses jug with a corncob stuck in the neck for a cork. The cool water tasted delicious.
They kept this up until after sunset, as long as they could see the ground and the plants, for no moment of the precious "season" must be wasted. When at last they stopped for want of light and dragged their mud-encrusted feet up the hill and along the ridge toward home, no one of the three spoke a word. Spattered with mud from head to foot, they walked with bent heads and sagging legs, like horses that have tugged all day at the plow through ground too hard for their strength.
"My land, I'm glad I don't have to set terbaccer every day," said Judith, as she fried the cakes. "I'm gonna make the coffee jes three times as strong to-night."
After they had eaten and drunk several cups of the rank decoction, they went immediately to bed. When they closed their eyes they could see nothing but tobacco plants standing up stiffly out of wet clay. They fell asleep with this picture painted on the insides of their eyelids.
Jerry had set the alarm clock for three. They seemed to have only just fallen asleep when its insistent ting-a-ling startled them awake. The early dawn was already melting the darkness of the room. Jerry jumped out of bed and in a few seconds had put on his shirt and overalls and was lighting the fire.
"Land alive, I wish I didn't have to get up," yawned Judith, stretching her slim young arms above her head. Reluctantly she put her feet out on the rag mat beside the bed, yawned, stretched, and began to put on her clothes. Elmer, who was still fast asleep in the other room, had to be shaken into consciousness twice before he crawled sleepily out and felt around on the floor for his overalls. They all washed on the bench outside the door, splashing the water about plenteously and rubbing vigorously with the towel to get the sleep out of their eyes. Soon Judith was frying the cakes, and the smell of boiling coffee filled the kitchen. They ate from the unwashed dishes of the night before. After the cakes and coffee they felt better and all three set out together for the tobacco field. This time they all went barefoot.
When they began to work, they found themselves so stiff in every bone and muscle that it seemed at first as if they could not possibly go on. After a while, however, they limbered up and managed to get through the morning. But the afternoon seemed as if it would stretch into eternity. The sun beat down fiercely. The mud caked thicker on their feet and the skin wore thinner on their aching fingers. Twice Judith collapsed and had to go and lie in the shade until her strength returned and the intolerable ache in her back and neck subsided a little. Jerry tried to persuade her to go back to the house and let him and Elmer go on with the setting; but she scorned his male assumption of superior strength andendurance. At last the sun sank and the cool evening air revived them a little. Gradually the sky paled, the light grew dimmer, and darkness closing in upon them made the green of the young plants intense and vivid. Still they worked on. At last they began to stumble over clods in the darkness and Elmer could no longer see to separate the plants from each other.
"Thank God we can't do no more to-night," said Jerry, in a tone of intense relief. He rose, straightened his strong young shoulders and surveyed the field.
"We got purty nigh an acre an' three quarters set," he announced. "An' the season's over. Agin to-morrow it'll be too dry."
"Gosh, I'm glad it will," said Judith, rubbing her bare feet on the grass to scrape away some of the caked mud.
Elmer went home that night the proud possessor of a dollar, and Jerry did not set the alarm clock. When they awoke next morning, the sun was high in the sky.
"Ain't you glad you don't have to set terbaccer to-day, Jerry?" said Judith, stretching luxuriously.
"You damn betcha I am," answered Jerry. "But there hain't no rest for the wicked. I gotta git into that corn right away if it's to be saved. The weeds'll grow like wildfire after this rain."
There came a second fairly good rain in early June, and they were able to set another acre of tobacco. A week or so later, it rained for a day and a night; and Jerry, going out next morning to see how deeply the rain had penetrated, was jubilant over his findings.
"She's soaked good, Judy," he called exultantly. "Even if the sun shines hot we'll be able to finish settin'. You git Elmer over this mornin' an' I'll pull plants."
He went off immediately after breakfast to pull plants; but in half an hour he was back, full of anger and disgust.
"You know what's happened, Judy? Somebody's stole near all our plants. There hain't plants left to set a half an acre, an' them's little bits o' runts no good fer nothin'. All themnice big strong plants is took. An' I'm purty nigh sure I know who took 'em, too; an' it's Luke Wolf. He was too damn lazy to water his bed there when it was so dry in April, an' his plants didn't do no good. He didn't have hardly nothing in his bed. So after I found the plants was stole, I clim up on the brow o' the ridge an' looked over; an' there sure enough was him an' Hat a-settin' fer dear life. They had that half witted brother o' Luke's a-droppin' fer 'em. I had a good mind to go daown an' tell 'em to gimme back my plants. But there 'tis. I can't prove he took 'em; but I know damn well he did."
"Ain't that a mean shame!" exclaimed Judith. "An' after all how hard you slaved to save them plants! An' we can't git plants nowhere else, cause nobody hain't got plants this year, count o' the dry spring. You had the finest bed anywheres araound."
"We'll have to put it in corn," said Jerry disgustedly. "An' the corn'll be so late the frost'll take it. If I'd a knowed, I might a saved myse'f the work o' plowin' an' harrowin' the ground. But that's haow it goes. A man works hard to do sumpin for hisself an' his fam'ly, an' then some lousy, thievin' neighbor slinks in an' gits away with it. It sholy is discouragin'."
Judith tried to console Jerry and tried for his sake to appear as indignant and disgusted as he over the loss. But it was not in her nature to take material loss so seriously; and she felt secretly relieved to think that she would not have to set any more tobacco that year. She was ashamed of this feeling, for it seemed like rank disloyalty to Jerry; but she could not help entertaining it.
Luke and Hat Wolf lived in a little ramshackle frame shanty in one of the neighboring hollows. They were a young couple not many years older than Jerry and Judith; but they had been married and had been raising tobacco on the shares for three or four years. They had a well sustained reputation for almost superhuman meanness and stinginess.
They were a pair of young giants. When they drovetogether in their buggy the springs sagged and passers-by felt sorry for the horse. Luke was a big, stupid looking lout, with small blue eyes and beefy jowls. He could neither read nor write; although Hat had been heard to say on different occasions that Luke could read "some kinds o' print." The kinds that he could read, however, did not include the kind universally employed.
Hat, a big, coarsely made, gipsy-like girl, was, to use her own phrase, a "great reader." She subscribed to a monthly magazine called "The Farm Wife's Friend," which cost her twenty-five cents a year. When she found the magazine in her mail box she took it home eagerly, full of delicious anticipations, and read it from the name in fancy print across the top of the first page to the last advertisement on the back sheet. It was printed in the vilest manner on the sleaziest of paper. Sometimes parts of it were so badly printed as to be illegible. It contained two or three sentimental love stories describing doings of people in high life. These stories abounded in beautiful heroines with delicate hands that had never approached a dish rag or a hoe handle, noble heroes and wicked, but fascinating villains. They opened to Hat a vista of unexplored possibilities and caused her to sigh over her own lack of opportunity.
Almost as engrossing as the stories, were little articles on how to get the best results with turnips, how to make the eyes sparkle, how to keep little chicks from getting head lice, how to remain always a mystery to your husband, how to keep sheets from fraying at the hems, how to make five hundred dollars out of a flock of fifty geese, how to tell fortunes with the tea cup, how to polish cut glass, how to keep the hands dainty and delicate, how to live so that the world is sweeter and sunnier for your presence, how to make orange marmalade out of carrots and how to treat a cow with a caked udder.
All of these "useful hints" Hat read with avidity, and many of them she tried to apply in her own household. She spent hours messing over a stew of mutton fat and cheap perfume in an attempt to make a homemade cold cream for beautifyingthe skin. After it had stood for a few days it turned rancid and she had to throw it out to the hogs. She became enthusiastic over the possibility of making a big income from geese, set a hundred eggs and hatched out seventy-five little geese, only to have the foxes feed fat on her flock. She mixed up the decoction to make the eyes sparkle; but it hurt her eyes and interfered with her sight. So she used it only once. She tried on Luke the receipt for remaining mysterious; but she was forced into the strong suspicion that he never even knew that anything unusual was affecting him in any way.
These failures did not, however, discourage her in the least. She read and experimented with the next month's collection with unabated enthusiasm. The magazine was her romance, her religion.
There were short poems in the paper, too. "Be a Beam of Sunshine," "Keep Smiling all the While," and "Never Let the Tear Drop Dim Your Eye," were characteristic titles. One poem, which made a deep impression on Hat, celebrated the joy of washing clothes. It described the deep satisfaction to be derived from rubbing, rinsing, bluing, and hanging out the family wash on the line. The constantly recurring refrain was, "And the Wind is Right to Dry." As Hat rubbed out her own faded cotton dresses and aprons and scrubbed manfully on the sweaty collars and wristbands of Luke's work shirts, even when she punished the washboard with his heavy denim overalls, stiffly encrusted with mud and axle grease and many other varieties of filth, and soused them up and down in the dirty, stinking, mouse-gray water, the words of this little poem lilted rhythmically through her mind, and she almost fooled herself into thinking that washing Luke's overalls was a delight. Who can say that the mail order sheet does not bring joy and comfort into the rural home? Nevertheless, Hat was glad when Luke came home one day with the information gleaned from Columbia Gibbs that overalls last twice as long if they are never allowed to see water.
The feature of the "Farm Wife's Friend" that caused her the most deep-seated excitement was the advertisements. Thebig black type exhorting the reader to "Send no Money," "Win Health and Happiness Without Cost," "Stop Suffering," "Send Two-cent Stamp and Know Your Future," "Make Big Money by Pleasant Work in Spare Time," these caused Hat to get down from the clock shelf the pen, the bottle of ink, and the letter paper and write to such of the advertisers as most appealed to her imagination.
It is true that the answers were usually disappointing. One brought a sample of kidney remedy, for which Hat, never having had any symptoms of kidney trouble, could find no present use. She laid it away carefully, half hoping that she or Luke might need it at some time in the future. The "Pleasant Occupation in Spare Time" people always required you to buy some complicated and expensive apparatus before you could begin to earn money with it. This was the last thing that Hat was prepared to do. She derived her greatest satisfaction from the firms that told your fortune for a dime or read your horoscope if you told them the date of your birth and the color of your eyes and hair; and from those that sent free samples of cosmetics, remedies for chicken diseases and gaudy calendars and bookmarks. There was no thrill in her life greater than that of finding a package in the mail box addressed to herself, of carrying it home in delightful suspense and at last opening the package in secret to see what it contained. The joy of getting something for nothing and of being in secret communication with unknown people appealed both to her cupidity and her thirst for adventure. Luke was not a partner in these pleasures; and as he could neither read nor write, she had no difficulty in keeping him in the dark regarding her correspondence.
Besides the "Farm Wife's Friend," and the carefully studied current almanac, Hat had other literature. She had a book called "Lena Rivers," in a tattered yellow paper cover, and another book entitled "No Wedding Bells For Her," in no cover at all. These two books she had read through at least a dozen times. She had a paper bound dream book which interpreted dreams, not as Professor Freud would do, but in away much more satisfying to Hat. As she dreamed a good deal, she consulted this book frequently.
The remaining book, and the one that she valued most of all, was a small, much thumbed volume that had lost its cover and its first seven pages. This book was called "Old Secrets and New Discoveries." There was something about the magic word "secret" that made the book especially precious to Hat. Between its covers, or more accurately speaking, between its eighth and its last page, was contained knowledge universal.
On page eight there were given directions "How to Charm Those Whom You Meet and Love." This little article Hat knew by heart.
"When you desire to make any one 'Love' you with whom you meet, although not personally acquainted with him, you can very readily reach him and make his acquaintance if you observe the following directions: Suppose you see him coming toward you in an unoccupied mood, or he is recklessly or passively walking past you, all that remains for you to do at that moment is to concentrate your thought and send it into him, and, to your astonishment, if he was passive, he will look at you, and now is your time to send a thrill to his heart by looking him carelessly, though determinately, into his eyes, and praying with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, that he may read your thought and receive your true Love, which God designs we should bear one another. This accomplished, and you need not and must not wait for a cold-hearted, fashionable and popular Christian introduction; neither should you hastily run into his arms, but continue operating in this psychological manner; not losing any convenient opportunity to meet him at an appropriate place, where an unembarrassed exchange of words will open the door to the one so magnetized. At this interview, unless prudence sanction it, do not shake hands, but let your manners and loving eyes speak with Christian charity and ease. Wherever or whenever you meet again, at the first opportunity grasp his hand in an earnest, sincere and affectionate manner, observing at the same time the following important directions, viz: As you take his bare handin yours, press your thumb gently, though firmly, between the bones of the thumb and forefinger of his hand, and at the very instant when you press thus on the bloodvessels (which you can before ascertain to pulsate) look him earnestly and lovingly, though not pertly or fiercely, into his eyes, and send all your heart's, mind's and soul's strength into his organization, and he will be your friend, and if you find him not to be congenial you have him in your power, and by carefully guarding against evil influences, you can reform him to suit your own purified, Christian, and loving taste."
Hat loved to read the recipes for anchovy paste and artichokes served with hollandaise sauce, and eagerly devoured the directions for serving a formal dinner of eight courses to a party of twelve guests. Her inability to apply this information did not greatly trouble her. But when she read aloud to Luke the "Hunters' and Trappers' Secrets," she felt somewhat aggrieved because the knowledge thus obtained did not result in an immediate increase of rabbits and muskrats and an equally rapid decrease of the foxes that slaughtered her geese; and her opinion of Luke, always a low one, dropped a peg lower.
On one occasion, when he appeared to have gotten the worst of it in a horse trade, she upbraided him bitterly for not having applied the information contained in her book.
"Huh," retorted Luke, glaring at her across the supper table. "Anybody'd think to listen to you that that measly little half-page in that 'ere damn book o' yourn tells all there is to know about a hoss. Why, I know more about hosses, jes from handlin' 'em, than the print in all yer books together cud tell."
"Well, then, if ye know so much, why did you let 'em put over a lame hoss on ye?" she flashed angrily.
"Land alive, woman," Luke's tone was high pitched with exasperation, "do you s'pose Gad A'mighty c'n tell a lame hoss when he's shot full o' stuff to make him so's he hain't lame? Haow cud I know he was lame when he wa'n't lame when I traded fer 'im? Besides, naow, I've looked him over,I know jes what's wrong with him. He hain't got but a little start of a ringbone; an' I kin burn that out an' have 'im cured in a month. Wimmin like you makes a man sick. You hain't got sense to pound sand with all yer books."
"Oh, hain't we though? Well, I hate to think o' the filthy, foul-livin' critters you men'd be if it wa'n't fer us wimmin. You'd go right back to be savages; an' you hain't fur off from it naow."
Hat also considered herself something of a musician, performing by ear on a fiddle handed down from her grandfather, who had been a fiddler and a caller off of dances.
When Jerry and Judith came to live in the neighborhood, Hat was the first to call upon the bride. Life was lonely back in the deep hollow where she and Luke lived, far from even the sound of a passing wagon; and the company of Luke had long since ceased to be stimulating. Last year, too, all the near neighbors had been old people. Hat was glad that somebody young and lively had come to take the place of the doddering old Patton couple who had lived there the year before.
Not many days after the new arrivals had moved in, Hat appeared one afternoon in the dooryard. She was dressed for visiting. She had on a clean pink and white checked frock and the inevitable little white apron. On her head was a starched pink sunbonnet. She was a tremendous creature, both tall and stout, and her skin was coarse. But she looked handsome in a dark, bold, gipsy-like way. Judith, who was neither small nor delicate, looked like a frail blossom beside her.
"Well, if it hain't Hat Wolf!" exclaimed Judith, who was bringing a bucket of water from the cistern. She set the bucket down and hastened to meet her visitor.
"My, but I'm glad you've come to live here, Judy," said Hat, with genuine enthusiasm. "Las' year I got so's I wouldn't come over here no matter haow lonesome I was, 'cause old Aunt Jinny Patton wouldn't do nothing but set an' sigh an' say she knew the Lord was a-goin' to take her soon. Old people is that tiresome. Naow you an' me, when we hain't gotmuch to do, kin visit each other. An' I'll lend you my books an' you kin lend me yourn; an' we'll sew rags together an' have good times. You know it gits awful lonesome in these hollers, an' anybody needs neighbors. Tain't like livin' on the pike."
Judith proudly showed Hat her new chicken coops, the four dozen hens that her father had given her, the place that they had selected for a garden spot and the shepherd pup which a neighbor had given them, a fluffy ball of black and white silk, trimmed, as nature knows how to trim, with soft tan. Then she led her into the house and showed her, piece by piece, all her wedding finery, her new sheets and towels and her bright bedquilts. Hat examined all these things with deep interest and exclaimed over them with unfeigned admiration. In the intervals of looking at the things to which Judith called her attention, her bold black eyes travelled about the room and took in every detail of its floor, walls, and furnishings. Nothing escaped her. She was alive with that small curiosity so frequent in farmers' wives, which causes them to take note of the smallest minutiæ of their neighbors' interiors. When she went away she carried in her mind an exact photograph of Judith's two rooms and of her dooryard. She even knew that Judith's clothesline was a wire and not a rope one. Such capacity for detail does solitude engender in the female mind.
"Well," she said at last, when she was prepared to leave, "I'll have to be a-gittin' along back home. I got a right smart o' little chicks hatched out an' I want to raise every one of 'em an' make as much as I kin this summer. It gits dark early in our holler, an' the rats begin to run around most afore the sun's gone. So I'd best git back an' git the chicks cooped up. I can't trust nothin' to Luke. Come over, Judy."
"Yes, you come agin, Hat."
The summer days came and went, bringing with them the usual routine that goes with the raising of tobacco in Scott County. After the plants had been set they wilted and looked as though they were dying. Many of them did actually die and had to be replaced by new plants. For about three weeks they scarcely seemed to grow at all. Indeed, they appeared to shrink, rather than grow; for the outer leaves died away leaving only the heart alive. All this time, however, the young plants were establishing themselves, accommodating their roots to the new soil and putting down deeper shoots into the ground. All at once, and with one accord, they began to grow with great rapidity. The small specks of green rose and spread, the leaves lengthened and broadened; and in a few weeks plant touched plant and shaded the ground.
When the plants were about three feet high, Jerry and Judith went through the rows "topping" them. With the thumb and forefinger they pinched off the central bud which, if allowed to grow, would shoot up and develop into flower and seed. This made the plants shorter, broader, and stockier and sent all the life into the great, succulent leaves. When Jerry and Judith worked at this task, their hands became covered with the thick, sticky, yellow juice of the plants. It took several changes of water to wash away this rank, poisonous sap; and the remaining stains were slow in wearing off.
The tobacco worms, too, were things that had to be contended with. All other plant pests leave tobacco alone, preferring more wholesome pasture. But there is one worm especially created to feast upon the tobacco plant. To this creature the deadly juice of the leaves means health and plenty. It resembles a tomato worm, but it is larger, longer, greener, and more many-legged. If it is allowed to live, itsdepredations are tremendous. Every week or so Jerry and Judith went through the tobacco plants with an old tin can in one hand and a stick in the other and knocked these offending vermin into the cans. When the rounds were completed they took the cans home and burned their contents in the cookstove.
It was not enough to cultivate the tobacco with the plow. It had to be hoed, too. To make its best growth each plant required individual attention. They chopped the ground about the plants with great hoes made especially for heavy work. The hard clay, baked flinty by the hot sunshine, resisted the hoes with all its might. It always seemed to Judith that her row would never come to an end. And when, after slow and toilsome progress, she at last reached the end, there were innumerable more rows waiting to be done. She was forced to admit that Jerry was her superior in the tobacco field. He could hoe three rows while she was doing one; and at evening, though tired, he was by no means at the end of his strength. It was very hot in the southward sloping field. The sun beat down mercilessly and the plants exhaled a heavy, sickening odor. She could feel the sweat standing out on her face, and rolling down her legs. It tickled and irritated her skin, and now and then she stopped to scratch viciously. Sometimes the acrid streams poured into her eyes and for the moment blinded her. When a breeze sprang up and swept across the tobacco field, its touch on her wet body made her feel almost cold. After it had died away the heavy quiet fell like a great, stifling blanket over the earth and it seemed twice as hot as before. Still she and Jerry plodded on with the patient persistence of those born and reared to a life of toil.
Not much visiting went on between Hat and Judith that summer; for the tobacco field claimed them both.
But Judith was young and buoyant. Tobacco did not have to be hoed every day; and these seasons of hard and continuous toil gave to the less strenuous days something of the feeling of holidays. In spite of the tobacco crop, life remained full of pleasures for Judith. She liked to work in her garden and see the beans and peas and cabbages making sturdygrowth under her care. She liked to feed her chickens and turkeys morning and evening and note how fast the little chicks and young turkeys were growing and how strong and firm were their bodies. She liked to set hens and care for the little chicks after they came out of the shell. She planted morning glories and nasturtiums about the house and trained them up on rude trellises made of tobacco sticks. The summer was full of radiant mornings a-quiver with sunshine with sweet smells and the carolling of birds, and cool, quiet evenings when she and Jerry sat together on the doorstep through the slow-falling midsummer twilight until the familiar outline of hills and trees melted into a blur of darkness and the last sleepy twitter of little birds drowsed into silence. To Judith, as to the growing plants and the wild things of the fields and woods, the sun still meant joyous life and growth, its absence, peace and sleep. She was not much more given to thinking than was the mocking bird in the hickory tree over the house; and she enjoyed her life even as he.
In September the tobacco ripened. The leaves turned from green to a rich gold and the crop was ready to harvest. Jerry refused to let Judith help with this strenuous task and hired his brother Andy instead. When the two men came in from the field after "cuttin'" their hands, faces and clothes were smeared thickly with the sticky tobacco sap and its rank odor filled the kitchen.
After the tobacco had been allowed to wilt in the field, they hauled it to Hiram Stone's nearest tobacco barn, a big structure built on the top of the ridge about half a mile from Jerry's field.
It was a great relief to Jerry when the last load was hauled in and hung up. So many things can happen to spoil a tobacco crop that he had lived in constant anxiety ever since the plants had been set in the ground. The weather had favored Scott County that year, and the tobacco was heavy and of fine quality.
"Naow, by gollies, if she don't up an' heat in the barn the crop's made," he said to himself.
The outdoor work with the crop was over and the rest was on the knees of the gods. Jerry now had his corn to work with. As he cut the corn and stacked it in shocks, and as he and Judith together shucked out the ears, Jerry watched the weather with an anxious eye. If there came a warm, damp day, he grew uneasy; and a succession of warm, damp days sent him to the tobacco barn to examine anxiously the yellowish-brown bunches and open the doors wider so that the air could circulate more freely.
"If she heats an' spiles now after all our work, won't it be a dirty shame?" he said to Judith one day, when she had accompanied him on one of these visits.
"I wonder if there's anything the matter with the terbaccer, Jerry? It don't somehow seem to smell right to me," said Judith, sniffing the air critically. "I allus did love the smell of terbaccer a-dryin' in the barn. But this kinda makes me feel sick to my stummick."
"Smells all right to me," opined Jerry. "Smells durn good." He sniffed again.
"Must be sumpin wrong with your smeller, Judy."
"I dunno what's wrong," doubted Judith, "but it sholy hain't got a good smell to me."
As the days passed, Judith began to notice that other things besides the tobacco had a queer, unnatural, slightly nauseating smell. She supposed at first that she had eaten something that had disagreed with her and that the effect would pass off in a day or so. The trouble, however, grew worse instead of better. It came on so slowly, so subtly and insidiously, that she was in its grip before she fully realized that there had been a change. She thought that the first time that she had noticed anything unusual in her feelings was the day at the tobacco barn. But she could not be sure. As she looked back she imagined that she had felt other queer sensations even before that. The beginnings of the strange disease were shrouded in mystery.
Some canned salmon that they had for dinner a few days after the visit to the tobacco barn did not taste good at all.Judith could not understand why. She had always loved canned salmon. It was a store delicacy rarely indulged in and hence much relished by the rural population of Scott County.
"What's wrong with this here salmon, Jerry?" she asked, turning it over listlessly with her fork. "It hain't spiled, an' yet it don't taste good, nohaow."
"Tastes good to me," said Jerry. "I cud eat a barrel of it. Gimme yours if you hain't a-goin' to eat it."
She gave him what was left on her plate and he ate it greedily and finished the can.
"I'm afraid you've worked too hard in the field this summer, Judy," he said anxiously. "I hadn't otta let you."
"I don't hardly think it's that," she answered languidly. There was no trace left of her usual animation. She seemed a different person.
As day after day passed and she got no better, she began to realize that a great change had taken place in herself and in the world about her. Nothing seemed at all the same. The fields and lanes, the dooryard, and particularly the house, were full of lurking, insidious stenches that attacked her on every hand and turned her stomach. Everything that she looked at seemed to have something ugly and repulsive about it. The very morning glories and nasturtiums were gaudy and tiresome and the smell of the nasturtiums sickened her. She particularly loathed the sights and smells of the kitchen and fled from them as often as she could. The odor of frying fat, of burning wood, or of beans boiling on the stove sent her reeling to the outside. There she gulped great draughts of the pure air, and as she grew calmer, breathed long and deep until her nausea had subsided. She found that she suffered much less when out of doors and would have stayed there all the time if she had not had to cook for Jerry. She did it as long as she could hold out. But sometimes it was too much for her, and she had to lie down in the bedroom and let Jerry find himself something to eat as best he could.
She detested the kitchen. The oilcloth-covered table, the blue dishes formerly so much prized, the coffee pot, and thebig white water pitcher were objects of loathing to her. She hated the sight of the calendars and little pictures that she had tacked on the walls. There was one picture that particularly irritated her, though she could not have told why. It was a still life representing dead grouse and partridges lying on a table. One day she took the picture down from the wall and stuffed it into the stove, getting at least a momentary feeling of satisfaction from hearing it crackle up the stovepipe.
There was one dish that seemed to her especially odious, a berry bowl that Lizzie May had given her as a wedding present. It was made of imitation Tiffany glass, and she had thought it lovely until this strange malady had seized upon her. Now she could not bear to look at the crude bronze and green and purple lights that it cast at her. It seemed an evil and poisonous thing. She poked it into the bottom of one of the bureau drawers and covered it up with sheets and pillow slips.
Jerry, too, came in for his share of the general odium. She developed a great dislike for certain little inoffensive habits that he had, such as rubbing his hands together over the fire, whistling loudly as he went about his chores and teasing the pup for the fun of hearing him growl and snap. When he kissed her, which she now rarely allowed him to do, she was conscious with a shiver of repugnance that he needed a shave and that he had been chewing tobacco.
One afternoon, when existence about the house seemed intolerable, she put on her sunbonnet and started out on the cowpath that led along the top of the ridge and down into the hollow where Hat and Luke lived.
Hat was plucking geese in the back dooryard. This side of the house was littered with an accumulation of broken boards, rusty pieces of scrap iron, old rags, papers, empty bottles, discarded cooking utensils and rusted-out tin cans. Hat was not the pink-and-white vision that she had been on the day when she had first visited Judith. She wore a ragged calico wrapper, faded by much sun and many washings, into a dismal drab. About her waist was pinned a greasy gunnysack to serve as an apron. The short ends of her coarse black hair hung in uncombed rattails about her face; and her great feet, planked firmly on the ground with the toes turned in, were bare and very dirty. Her clothes, her hair, and her perspiring face were powdered thickly with the down from the feathers which fell like snow about her and frosted the ground for yards around. Between her knees she gripped the goose's head and with her big, coarse hands plucked away great handfuls of the soft, white, fluffy down from the breast and under the wings and stuffed them into a stiff paper flour sack that stood open at her side. The goose struggled and squawked mightily. Hat only gripped the prisoner more firmly between her great knees and went about her task more vigorously.
As Judith came up she was greeted by a strong smell of pigsty. Luke had had a good corn crop and was fattening several hogs that fall. Three or four lean hounds that were slinking about the dooryard barked in a perfunctory, spasmodic way, then relapsed into silence. Hat stopped for a moment to try to brush away with her down-covered hand some of the fluff that clung irritatingly about her eyes.
"Land alive, Judy, I sholy do hate to pick geese," she gasped. "I git all het up, an' then the durn stuff sticks in the sweat, an' you wouldn't believe haow it itches me. But it's gotta be done, an' there hain't nobody else that'll do it. Feathers is a good price this year. An' whenthesefeathers is turned into money, it'smethat's a-goin' to handle it. Las' time we sold feathers, Luke he got holt o' the money an' that's the last I ever seen of it. An' it was me that raised 'em an' fed 'em an' picked 'em an' done every durn thing."
Hat's voice trembled with anger and self-pity. Judith opened her mouth to start to say something; but Hat did not wait to hear what it might be. She was seething with a sense of wrong and glad to have somebody in whom to confide.
"The men sholy do have it easy compared with us wimmin, Judy," she continued. "Here all this summer I worked like a dawg in the terbaccer a-settin' an' a-toppin' an' a-hoein' an' a-wormin' an' a-cuttin'; an' all the fore part o' the winter I'llspend a-strippin'. An' then along about Christmas Luke'll haul the terbaccer off to Lexington an' sell it an' put the money in his pocket an' I won't never see a dollar of it. An' if I even want a few cents to buy me calico for a sun-bonnet, I gotta most go daown on my knees an' beg for it. I work jes as hard in the crop as he does. An' then what does he do while I cook an' wash dishes an' clean the house an' do the washin' an' tend the chickens an' turkeys? He feeds an' tends the hosses. That's what he's got to do outside of his crop. He hain't never picked a goose in his life; an' he wouldn't pick one if they died for lack o' pickin'. He says pickin' geese is wimmin's work. I tell you what I'm a-goin' to do. Nex' summer I ain't a-goin' to touch hand to his corn ner his durn terbaccer crop. If pickin' geese is wimmin's work, settin' an' hoein' terbaccer is man's work, an' he kin do it hisse'f 'ithout any he'p from me. I'm jes sick an' tired of slavin' like a mule an' gittin' nothin' fer it."
She paused on the brink of tears. A large tortoise shell cat arched her back and rubbed herself against the legs of her mistress, then reached up her head and sniffed delicately at the goose.
"An' then," she went on in the next breath, "with all his huntin' foxes most every night an' keepin' all them lazy haounds a-slinkin' raound the place an' a-eatin' up the feed the chickens otta have, he can't keep the foxes from gittin' my geese. Las' night when I went to ketch 'em up to coop 'em I found my biggest goose was missin'. An' this mornin' when I was a-lookin' up my turkeys, sure nuf I come on the feathers jes over that little hill yonder. I was that vexed an' disgusted. Think of it! Him an' all his durn haounds together ain't as smart as one fox! An' what's he a-doin' naow, while I'm a-slavin' an' a-sweatin' over these geese? He's a-standin' yonder by the shed a-chawin' terbaccer an' a-gassin' with young Bob Crupper. He's been there in that one spot this good two hours, an' he'll be there like enough till chore time to-night. Men makes me sick; always a-sunnin' theirselves around the barnyard like flies on a dunghill."
She stopped, exhausted by her passionate jeremiad, and relaxed her hold upon the goose, which she had finished plucking. It ran off squawking indignantly. She made a vain attempt to scatter the down from about her nostrils by blowing upward, then brushed her nose frantically with her furry hand. "Ouf," she puffed, irritated beyond endurance by the clinging stuff.
Judith looked in the direction of the wagon shed and saw Luke and Bob Crupper leaning in easy attitudes against an old spring wagon that was drawn up outside the shed. From time to time they changed the weight of their bodies from one leg to the other or spat idly into the scattered straw. As she was looking, she saw Bob Crupper turn his head in her direction for a moment and then say something to Luke. Luke made some reply, and she could see the two men laughing together. Hat, too, had noticed the little pantomime.
"I wonder what them two was a-sayin'?" said Judith, casting another look in the direction of the two men.
"Sumpin nasty, I'll betcha," snapped Hat in a tone of disgust. "When men gits to laffin' together you kin be sure one or 'nother of 'em has come out with some dirty talk."
Judith knew that there was much truth in Hat's accusation; and she had a momentary feeling of curiosity as to what had been said, for she felt sure that it had been about herself.
Hat went to the coop to get another goose and came back carrying the big white bird with its head under her arm. The intelligent creature seized a moment when Hat's arm muscles were somewhat relaxed to wrench its head free and bite her captor viciously on the hand. She screamed shrilly with pain and anger.
"Damn the critter!" she cried, wrenching her hand loose and stuffing the offending head back under her arm. "Lord love you, Judy, you hain't got no idea haow hard a goose kin bite."
"I have, too," answered Judith. "I bin bit more'n once."
"I wisht Luke had," said Hat, glancing darkly in the direction of her husband, as she settled herself to the task ofplucking. "Have you hearn the last news abaout Ziemer Whitmarsh, Judy, an' the way he's been a-carryin' on with Minnie Pooler?"
"I ain't hearn nothing lately nor been nowhere," answered Judith. "I been a-feelin' so bad I ain't cared to go nowhere nor do nothin'. I'd jes as leave be dead as feel the way I been a-feelin' lately."
"Why, what kin ail you, Judy? You've allus been so strong an' hearty."
Judith began to tell Hat about how she had been feeling for the past two weeks or so. As she went into the details of her symptoms, a look of interest, of satisfaction, and of amused patronage came into Hat's face and widened into a broad grin which seemed to Judith at first disagreeable and then revolting.
"Why, Judy Pippinger, d'you mean to tell me you don't know what ails you?"
"Haow should I know? I don't know nothing about diseases."
Hat broke into a coarse laugh.
"You hain't got no disease, Judy, no more'n this here goose has a disease. You got a young un in yer insides. That's what's wrong with ye. You was kinda lucky it didn't come sooner."
With the last remark, Hat shot a swift, sharp glance at her visitor.
Judith was so taken by surprise that she scarcely noticed the meaning glance. It took her a full half minute to absorb the new idea. It was a possibility that of late had not occurred to her, although the thought of it had caused her some needless worry earlier in her relations with Jerry. She felt humiliated at disclosing what Hat appeared to consider such crass ignorance and disgusted at an indefinable something in Hat's attitude.
"But Hat, a caow ain't sick when she's a-fixin' to have a calf," she said at last, looking straight at Hat with her clear, level, searching eyes.
"Wimmin has troubles caows don't never even dream on. You'll find that out afore you're married long," said Hat darkly. From this cryptic prophecy she launched into a description of the pregnant state and went into the subject in all its ramifications. She did not tell Judith how it came that she who had never had a child knew so many intimate details regarding the symptoms of pregnancy. That after all was her own affair.
Judith listened with a mixture of interest and disgust. She wished to know all that she could find out on this as on any other matter that concerned her life. But she was revolted by Hat's whispered undertone and her air of salacious secrecy. She was glad to cut her visit short on the plea that she had work to do at home. When she left, the two men were still standing in the same attitudes by the wagon shed.
As she walked homeward along the top of the ridge, she was glad to look out over the broad expanse of clean earth, to draw in deep breaths of pure, hilltop air and to shake from her the close and fœid atmosphere of Hat's hollow.
She felt less abjectly miserable after she had learned the cause of her distress of body. As time passed, her symptoms became gradually less violent, and at last disappeared altogether. The nausea passed away, and she was able to eat again and enjoy her food. The pictures on the wall took on their old, natural look; and she got out Lizzie May's present from under the sheets and pillow slips in the bureau drawer and found it once more a delight to her eyes.
It was good to feel like herself once more and to be able to get pleasure instead of loathing from the multitudinous small things that make up the major part of life. It was like waking up from some dismal nightmare and finding the earth still a good and pleasant place. The happiness of freedom regained more than equaled the irk of the old bondage. And as Judith stretched and laughed and enjoyed the rain and the sun and ate heartily and loved Jerry more than she had ever loved him before and felt herself overflowing with physical wellbeing and spiritual content, she knew the joy of reacting to perhaps the most powerful stimulant in life, the elixir of sharp contrast.
And now that she was well again there was plenty of work for her to do. The tobacco, which had survived the warm, damp seasons fatal to many a tobacco crop, must be stripped and stripped quickly, so that Jerry could haul it off to market before the price dropped. Jerry had bulked the tobacco early in November, and had been stripping for some time. But it was slow work for one pair of hands. Now that Judith was able to help him, things went faster.
They got up in the dark, chilly winter mornings long before it was day, ate breakfast and did the morning chores by lamplight, and were ready to go out into the slow, gray dawn whilethe sky was still only faintly alight and the familiar outlines of the barnyard only dimly visible. The last thing that they did before leaving was to scatter food for the hens, which had not yet come from the roosts. Then they climbed the hill to the ridge path that led to the big tobacco barn.
At the far end of the ridge, the tobacco barn lifted its weathered bulk into the sky. Built on the highest point of land, the wide sweep of lonely fields and pastures dropped away from it in every direction. Its roofs fell from the ridgepole with the broad sweep of a buzzard's wing; and it seemed like some great bird brooding over the wide, solitary expanse, or like some gigantic, incense-breathing temple built by these poor shanty dwellers to their one god, the all-powerful god of toil. From its point of vantage it dominated the landscape, somber, strong, and implacable.
But to Jerry and Judith it was only a tobacco barn and they hurried to it as the factory hand goes to his daily dungeon.
By the time they reached the little stripping room that leaned wearily against the tobacco barn, it would be light enough to begin to strip. They shared this stripping room with Hat and Luke, the two couples working at opposite ends of the little oblong box. Sometimes Hat and Luke would be there already, and in that case the fire would be lighted. If they were the first to arrive, Jerry would quickly light the fire in the little rusty box stove and they would settle down to work.
All day long they would stand stripping the soft brown silk leaves from the thick, woody brown stalks, tying them in bunches and assorting them according to color and texture. The softest, silkiest, most pliable, and lightest colored leaves were the best in quality. Descending from this there were many grades ending in the scraggy, reddish top leaves, torn and discolored leaves and leaves that had been touched by frost.
At noon the two couples, still at opposite ends of the room, would eat the lunches that they had brought with them and immediately fall to work again, working steadily until theshort winter day was over and the twilight blurred the shades of brown before their eyes.
It was strange and unnatural how little conversation went on among these four young people as they stood working together day after day. Judith would have liked to talk and often wondered why she and the others did not talk more. Sometimes she made a deliberate attempt to start conversation; but it always ended in nothing. There hung over them always a heavy air of self-consciousness and constraint that smothered all natural spontaneity. There were several private and personal reasons for this. Jerry continued to nurse the old grievance of the stolen tobacco plants, and added to it the suspicion that Luke was getting away with some of the cream of his crop. He could steal a good many bunches without the possibility of their being missed, and Jerry opined that he was just the man to do it.
The minds of Hat and Luke dwelt largely upon the subject of money. They had one all-consuming desire in common, which was to get their crop stripped and on the market before the price fell. In this at least they were at one; aside from it their thoughts and desires were their own. Hat meditated upon what she had been reading in her latest copy of the "Farm Wife's Friend," mused upon her wrongs and Luke's shortcomings, and toyed gingerly, yet deliciously with thoughts of intrigue. Sometimes she lifted her black eyes to Jerry and saw that he was strong, healthy and handsome, then forgot him the next moment in thoughts of some imaginary lover.
Luke, in the short intervals of thoughts of gain, thought about the fox that he had hunted the night before and the good swigs of whiskey that he had had at Bob Crupper's out of a gallon jug stopped with a corncob. And he remembered how good the whiskey had made him feel. Not infrequently his mind wandered from these thoughts to dally with meditations more vague but more attractive. Sometimes when Judith lifted her head she met his little blue eyes fixed upon her with a look, the meaning of which was unmistakable. Instantly he would withdraw his eyes and work furiously at his task.
Once Jerry surprised one of these looks. His face flushed a dark, angry red and his fist involuntarily doubled, the knuckles protruding formidably. He opened his mouth, then thought better of it and closed it again. Luke had not noticed that he had been observed; and Judith, absorbed in her work of sorting, had not seen either Luke or Jerry. The little pantomime had taken only a second to perform and was gone as though nothing had happened.
Once Hat surprised this look and shot a lightning glance from under her heavy black eyebrows to see if Judith was answering it. Reassured from this direction, she turned her bold eyes and cast a black look of uncontrollably furious jealousy at her husband who was now bending again over his tobacco.
So the little human comedy went on; and Judith, the only one who was not cherishing ulterior motives or covert suspicions, found her natural desire for companionship swamped in this heavy undertow of suspicion, greed, craftiness and lust. There is an idea existing in many minds that country folk are mostly simple, natural and spontaneous, living in the light of day and carrying their hearts on their sleeves. There is no more misleading fallacy. No decadent court riddled with lust of power, greed, vice, and intrigue, and falling to pieces of its own rottenness, ever moved under a thicker atmosphere than that which brooded over the little shanty where these four fresh-cheeked young country people stood stripping tobacco.
They sighed with relief when the long job was over and the tobacco was ready for market.
Tobacco was an unusually good crop that year and Jerry's half amounted to nearly two tons. In addition to his own tobacco, he was hauling a small crop for one of the neighbors, so his load was a heavy one. It was an exciting morning when the great, towering load stood outside the tobacco barn with four horses attached in the first gray glimmer of the dawn, and Jerry, perched on the high seat, cracked his whipover the four broad backs, and started out on the thirty mile trip to Lexington.
When he came home next day there was a check for three hundred and eighty-four dollars and seventy-six cents folded in the inside pocket of his coat. His tobacco had brought the high average of ten cents a pound. He had never been so proud and happy in his life as when he opened the check and spread it before Judith's delighted eyes. There was money to finish paying for the horses and money to put in the bank. His joy was marred only by the knowledge that Luke had averaged a cent a pound more for his crop, a knowledge which confirmed him in the suspicion that some of his finer grades had been stolen.
As Judith's waist measure increased, and it became apparent to everybody who saw her that she was with child, she became the recipient of the advice and confidence of all the women of the neighborhood. The confidences were many and varied; and the advice of one woman often flatly contradicted that of another. But they were all alike delivered with an air of conclusive authority. She found that when these women spoke to her about her pregnancy they adopted a manner almost identical with that which had revolted her in Hat: an air of great intimacy and secrecy, as though the subject was of such a private nature that it concerned only the talker and listener and brought the two together into a close and exclusive atmosphere. With this was combined a certain archness and playful levity which seemed to Judith the very soul of lewdness. Jerry's mother, Aunt Mary Blackford, a well meaning soul according to her lights, was one of the worst offenders; and she presumed upon her relationship, as relatives have a habit of doing. Judith grew to dread the approaches of these women as one loathes and dreads a pestilence. She resented their insinuating interference in a matter which she wished to concern only herself and Jerry; and the manner of their interfering seemed to her vile and disgusting.
After having endured several lengthy visits, she learned tolock the door and hide in the bedroom when she saw a female figure approaching over the brow of the hill. The visitor would try the door, and finding it locked would knock loudly and imperatively, then wait a short time and knock again. Having satisfied herself that there was no one at home, she would scrutinize the dooryard more or less closely, according to the extent of her curiosity, and at last turn away and plod up the hill again. Not until she was quite out of sight would Judith dare to open the door.
Sometimes, however, she was not fortunate enough to see the visitor in time to feign absence from home. This was the case one afternoon when Aunt Maggie Slatten, the mother of Hat, and of many other children, bore down upon her.
They had not long since finished dinner. Jerry had just left the house to go back to his spring plowing, for it was February, and Judith was washing the dishes, when the door was unexpectedly opened and disclosed Aunt Maggie occupying the major part of the door space. She heaved in and sat down heavily in a chair, which creaked at the onset of her tremendous weight.
"Land alive, Judy, it's a hard climb over them hills," she gasped, laboriously taking off her mud-encrusted overshoes and setting them under the stove to dry. "An' the roads is that deep in mud, a body kin hardly pull their feet along. But I hearn haow you was in the family way. An' knowin' it was your first an' haow you didn't have no mammy, I felt I jes had to come daown an' set with you a while. Well, an' haow air you a-feeling', Judy?"
Judith sensed at once the familiar aura that had become her abhorrence. There was an air of condescension, too, as from one who confers a favor. She had never liked Aunt Maggie.
"I'm a-feelin' all right," she answered coldly, and went on washing the dishes.
"Well, that's good, Judy. It's a great blessin' to be well."
Having disposed of her overshoes, she laid aside her black sateen sunbonnet and started to divest herself of her outer garment. This task proved too much for her.
"I reckon you'll have to give me a little he'p here, Judy," she breathed, already winded by her efforts. Judith went over and helped her to peel the wrap from her fat arms and shoulders. It was an ancient garment called some decades earlier, when it had been new and fashionable, a dolman. It was of broadcloth, now faded into a greenish tinge, and it was trimmed with fringe, which was somewhat greener than the cloth. She laid the dolman over the back of a chair with the care and reverence due to best apparel and sat down again, smoothing her white apron over her lap.
Aunt Maggie was a woman of great girth. She had a large, flabby face of the color of cold boiled veal, so many large chins that they quite obscured what might have been her neck, a colorless, thin-lipped mouth and small, piercing, light gray eyes which gave Judith the uncomfortable feeling that they were bent upon prying into the innermost recesses of her private affairs. She had a way of asking a question in a sudden, direct and commanding way and accompanying it with a swift, searching look from her keen gray eyes, which seemed to say that she was entitled to the whole truth and she meant to have it.
Undaunted by Judith's assertion of present perfect health, an assertion which seemed to Aunt Maggie to be somehow rather indelicate, she proceeded, as one vested with authority, to inquire into the earlier history of Judith's pregnancy and to wrest from her admissions upon the basis of which she launched forth into the subject that she had come to discuss. She had a hoarse male voice and the air of one accustomed to dictate to others. Glancing about from time to time, as though constantly mindful of the fact that walls might have ears, she related to Judith all the details that she could remember—and her memory was excellent—concerning her own many pregnancies and the pregnancies of various of her neighbors and kinsfolk.
After a while Aunt Maggie's stream of talk began to flag. There was no stimulation to be gotten from Judith, who asked no questions and made few comments. And even a woman of fifty-three who cannot read or write, but has had sevenchildren and three miscarriages, cannot talk forever on the pathology of pregnancy without at least some little assistance from her listener.
The talk began to be punctuated by heavy silences.
The whole afternoon was spent in this way, the silences growing longer and heavier as time dragged on. Still Aunt Maggie made no move to go.
"And where's the baby clothes, Judy?" she inquired. "Fetch 'em an' let me have a look at the dear little things."
"I hain't got any made yet, Aunt Maggie," answered Judith, putting a stick of wood into the fire.
"What, no baby clothes yet! Why, Judy Pippinger, hain't you 'shamed of yerse'f? Why, I'd a thought you'd 'a' bin sewin' fer the baby this four months back."
"How many months' sewin does it take to cover a little infant a foot long?" inquired Judith. "I 'lowed I could run 'em all up in a day on the old machine at dad's."
Aunt Maggie was aghast at this sacrilege.
"I never put in a stitch for one o' my babies that wa'n't done by hand," she proclaimed self-righteously.
Judith mentally reviewed the members of Aunt Maggie's family, a heavy, snub-nosed, dull-eyed swarm, and wondered in just what way they showed the benefits of hand-sewn baby clothes. But she said nothing. Aunt Maggie was too dominating and forceful a personality to have her prejudices challenged.
At last the February day began to gray to a close. The little window admitted less and less light; and Judith, hoping to hasten Aunt Maggie's departure, lighted the lamp.
"It's sinful to waste kerosene, Judy," commented her visitor. "You could 'a' gone a good half hour more 'ithout the light. 'Waste not, want not,' is a true sayin'. Well, I'll hev to be a-gittin' back home an' see to supper an' the milkin'. The young uns don't stir hand ner foot if I hain't there to tell 'em."
With alacrity Judith helped Aunt Maggie on with her dolman, and even knelt down on the floor and put on her overshoes. Seeing her at last really prepared to leave, she felt of a sudden quite kindly toward her visitor and suffered a twingeof shame at having treated her so coldly. She smiled in a cordial and friendly way as she ushered Aunt Maggie out of the house.
But when the door had closed behind her visitor the smile vanished and a look of empty weariness settled upon her face. It seemed as though Aunt Maggie still sat in the room and with her all the other stuffy old women of the neighborhood. Their prying eyes leered at her out of the gloomy corners. From their presence issued a stifling and oppressive aura.
When Jerry came in he found her sitting slackly in the old rocking chair, her long hands hanging limp like dead things.