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the train to some one of the short-houred, easy-jobbed, New Jerusalems of the north; Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Akron, and Detroit. Sometimes they looked eager, and sometimes afraid, but usually she envied them. They were young and they were going away, and to all of them the world out there offered less than to Marsh. He was no ignorant unskilled hill man. He could get a job for the asking in any oil field, so she had heard Mr. Elliot sayand the pity of it hurt.
Her impatience to be home and take Marsh his afternoon snack increased as she drove around the shaded lower road. She hurried Maude more than her custom, and the mare's shoulders dripped with sweat when she drove down the barn lane and into the barn hall. She heard Marsh's short quick-tempered oaths from the tool house, and knew that the harness had broken again, and he had had to stop and mend it. She glanced furtively at the bundles below her in the wagon bed, and spread her dress a bit on the seat, but when Marsh came from the tool house he had eyes only for Maude. "You've let her get too hot," he said, and stood a moment frowning and studying the mare.
"I'm sorry," she answered, and felt a moment's jealousy for Maude. Marsh was hot and tired; but not too tired to think of the mare. "Had anything to eat?" she asked, and hoped he would smile and seem more like Marsh than this stone faced stranger she scarcely knew. Maybe he would come over to the wagon and ask her how was Burdine, or say that the sun was hot and he knew she was tired, the way he had used to do; and she could tell him now and not have to go thinking of it all through the afternoon.
"I'm not hungry," he answered shortly when he had studied Maude a time. "How much did th' chickens bring?"
"II've not counted th' money yet."
"You ought to always count your money, Delph," he said, "else you could lose some an' never know."
"I will next time," she answered, and waited until he was a good piece away in the corn before she stabled Maude and carried the bundles into the house.
She thought about the telling all through the hot close afternoon while she worked in the garden. Sometimes she paused, leaning on her hoe handle, and looked toward Marsh plowing down near the
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river; or up to Fairchild Place, the bits of it that could be seen between the trees. She thought of the brick house where the Elliots lived, high on a hill where there was a breeze, with a yard filled with flowers, by a road where she could see the cars go by, and windows from which she could see out over the country. Someday her child must live in a place like that. He must have the world and all it had to give, and never know the feel of being shut away in a valley low down by a river. Marsh would change when he knew there was a young one on the way; for no matter how sharp and tired he was sometimes he was always tender with young growing things.
She worked later than common in the garden, so that heavy twilight had come before she finished the barn work. Marsh came from the fields just as she stripped the last cow. Though she feared the bread might be burning she waited for him, hoping that he would be different from the afternoon. But he hardly glanced at her, only said in a low voice that seemed low because there was no breath back of it to make it loud, "I'll need a light."
She reached for a lantern kept hanging by the corn crib door, found matches in their usual chink in the logs, and when the light was strong and steady hung it in the hall. She turned then and watched him and the mules come into the barn. They came so quietly, so steadily, more like one than three, as if through the sixteen hours of the summer daylight they had lost their identity somewhere back there under the hot sun, given it to the sultry air and the long furrows of heavy soil. The mules stood still, heads drooping, tails hanging straight and heavy, cars motionless, shoulders and flanks shining dark with sweat. The day had done that to them, and for every step they had taken, Marsh had taken a step, too. She looked at him while he took collar and harness from Ruthie Ann. His blue shirt lay in clinging folds of sweat soaked cloth across his back and shoulders, and the dark earth of the corn lands clung to his shoes and the frayed legs of his faded overalls. "Got all th' feedin' done?" he asked without looking at her.
"Yes."
She turned away to carry the milk to the house, but stopped when he asked, "Cow's failin'? You didn't get so much milk as common."
"Ilet Bud have too much an' Prissy kicked again."
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''You ought to chain her legs like I said.''
She said nothing to that; she felt heavy and tired and old. Why must he care so over a bit of spilled milk? He could in the oil fields make in one day enough money to buy all the milk the cows gave in a week. She smelled the burning bread before she reached the yard gate, but forced herself to walk slowly so as not to spill more milk.
In the kitchen she hated herself for her clumsy ways; the bread black as the stove, and the gravy and coffee not made, the milk to be strained and the table set, and onions and cucumbers to be peeled and sliced. She hurried, but Marsh came before she was finished. She heard him at the water bench by the back door, washing slowly and heavily, not quickly with a slapping and blowing and sousing as he had done in the morning. "Supper not ready yet?" He stood in the doorway, and looked at her with tired vexed eyes.
She flushed as she tried to explain. "I got a late start on th' supper, but I'll have it on pretty soon."
He reached behind him for a piece of frayed harness he had brought to mend with a leather thong. He stood there, looking at it, frowning, turning it over and over in his hand. She glanced at him across the pan of cucumbers she was peeling. He needed harnesses so. She wished she had waited to spend the moneyand that the baby had waited, too. That was maybe what made her so tired. She wasn't through yet; the dishes to wash and a churning that ought to be done after supper, and tomorrowhe would know by then and maybe things would be different.
She hurried. The coffee had boiled and everything was done but the gravy. It was going to be lumpy again. She stirred it hard. Maybe he wouldn't ask about the money, or"Delph, it'll be midnight 'fore you get that gravy stirred."
"II'll soon have it ready." She wished he would sit down, and not stand there, so big and towering somehow. But he sat down only when the food was on the table, and brought the frayed leather and laid it by his chair. She sat and watched him break a piece from the pone of bread, and saw his frown at the thick black crust. "Ilet th' bread burn while I was milkin'."
He said nothing, hardly thought of the bread. He was tired, and his eyeballs ached, and his body felt heavy and filthy with sweat caked soil. The day had been long and hard, crueler than it might
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have been because of the harness that was always breaking and coming apart, vexing him into a weary anger at the waste of time. The plowing must be finished before the next rain, and the rain should come any time now. The watermelons fared well, but the young corn needed rain, and tonight the sunset had been red. He thought of the poor pasture and of buying hay and feed, and tried to reckon in his head how much this would cost and that, and wondered if he could manage hay and feed and harness all within the next week.
"Did you ever count th' money, Delph?" he asked, and pushed his plate away.
She looked at him with timid, troubled eyes. "Marshyou're not eatin' much. Don't you want some custard?"
He glanced at the custard and frowned. He had never cared much for sweet things, not since his days in the oil fields when the boarding house flies settled first on the sticky, frosted cakes. "I wish you'd said somethin' sooner. I'm full, an' what's th' use of takin' eggs an' time to cook foolishness we don't need? You've got too much to do as it is."
She hastily swallowed a sip of coffee to make her food go down. "II just used two eggs, an' th' little time I took wasn't enough to keep me from th' gardenin'."
"You know I wasn't thinkin' a that," he said, stung by her seeming hint that he cared nothing for her, but only the work in the garden. "Where'd you put th' money, Delph?" He got up, took the broken harness, studied it as he said, "With what I've
got an' that I'll mebbe be able to get some harness.'' He waited and when she continued to sit silent by the table, staring at the lamp, he asked again with a rising impatience, "Where'd you put th' money? I want to see if there's enough."
"I'll get it." She got up, took the lamp, then set it down.
"Your hands are shakin', Delph."
"It'sit's just workin' in th' gardenor milkin's made em tired," she answered in a low breathless voice, and walked slowly away to their bed room. She saw the bed dim in one corner, and the bundles in a dark little mound by the foot board. Her hands were damp with sweat, and she wiped them carefully on her apron, then reached under the feather bolster and took out the sticky wad of one dollar bills and the few pieces of silver. She walked back and laid it
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on the table. Her hands were wet again, and a worn dime clung a moment to her palm before she shook it away, and it lay on the oil cloth with the rest, shining a little in the lamplight.
She took the bowl of butter and started to put it away, but turned instead and watched Marsh as he stuck the harness leather under one arm and bent over the money. He counted it, and it was such a long while. He counted it a second time and that was longer still. He raised his head and looked at her. Worry and vexation tightened his mouth and changed the color of his eyes. "But, Delph, that's not all."
She nodded.
"Why you must a lostsomethin' over twenty dollars."
"I didn't lose it. I spent it."
"Spent it?"
"MarshIwe're goin' to have a baby."
"A baby? Now?"
"It'll be late FebruaryI guess."
He stood there with his mouth open, the money half in his hand, half spread on the table. The piece of harness slid from under his arm, and he reached impatiently and caught it in his hand. He looked at her with anger and surprise hardening his eyes and his chin. "Youyou goin' to have a babyan' me with melons to peddle an'. What in th' hell has a baby in February got to do with money now?"
She stood a moment staring at him with wide disbelieving eyes, her head thrust forward, and her black brows drawn with the effort to understand all in the instant something for which there seemed no understanding. She looked at his angry eyes and stubborn chin and saw him as a strangera Marsh she had never met until now. She swallowed a choking nothing in her throat, and nodded once and slowly. "Youyou mean, Marsh, that all you can think of is thatthat my babyour baby'll be in th' way? Thatth' melons an' th' work they come first an'." She heard her voice trail away and die, smothered by a wildness that rose and rose like a storm not to be checked by right or reason.
He fumbled with the harness and looked at it while he said in a lower, quieter voice, "But, Delph, how could I want a child now? Can't you seealways I used to hear my father say that too many of us put him in arenter's shack. You could ha waited, to spend th'
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money I mean. We ought to ha been careful when there's so many things, an' my land."
Delph flung up her head at the one word land. All the half formed doubts and fears, the small rebellions, the never mentioned hatreds she had hoarded through the spring, the dreams cast aside like outgrown clothing, the bewildering conviction that Marsh didn't want a child, the spilled milk, the burned bread, her tiredness and the ache in her back; all seemed sprung from the land. And greater than all of it was the loss of Marsh; his foolish wish to farm had changed him for the moment into a beast no better than his mules. She gripped the back of a chair until her knuckles gleamed like white bits of fleshless bone, but she never felt the chair. She choked once, and her breath came in wild quivering words. "Your landalways your land. I don't mind workin' on it from mornin' till night. I'd peddle, I'll do anything. I'd a stood by an' watched you work yourself to death an' spend money you'll never get back, but this baby it comes first. I'll never have another one to tie you down, an' have you begrudgin' its food an' its clothes. Be careful you saywho was thinkin' a babies an' such th' nights in th' spring when you were beggin' me? Now, all you can think of is your land. Landyou don't even own it, killin' yourself with work an' gettin' nothin' for it. You're no farmer. There's been many a one raised to th' business that can't see its way through, an' youyou can't farm."
"Th' hell I can't," Marsh began, but while he stood struggling for words, Delph flung the chair from her, came nearer and stood with her hands on the table, and looked at him with fearless blazing eyes, that seemed more wild blue flames leaping above her red flushed face than a woman's eyes. "You could ha told me you had nothin' in your head but farmin' when you married methat you wanted a farm hand 'stead of a wifean' children, that once you started you'd sooner live on dry bread an' beans than go back to."
"Delph, for God's sakeyou know there's no truth in what you're sayin. I didn't mean." But Delph was speaking again, smothering him in a torrent of words, the same doubt, the same ridicule, the same determination to shape him against his will that he had foundand foughtin the rest of the world. He retreated a step from her wrathful eyes, and tried again. "Delphth' land it's for you an' th' children we'll havesomeplace to hold to an'."
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Delph never heard him for the hot wild words she said. He felt her words like blows, directed at something that gave his body excuse for being; all the plans and hopes and dreams of his life, the years of dangerous hateful work, and the years of waiting. Always when something hit him he hit back; he stood now with his hands useless, powerless against Delph's tongue. He felt the uselessness of his hands; and it was a maddening thing, like being trapped in a crude oil fire he could not fight.
She was looking at him now, her head tossed back above her proud high shoulders, her eyes flashing, secure in the certainty that she was right, not fighting for her self, but for some future for the childand for the Marsh she had wanted him to beflinging his foolhardy ways in his face. "You'd be a fool, Marsh, to throw your life awayhere down in this lonesome valley by a half dead lumber townworkin all your days an' maybe endin' up with nothin', gettin' old, maybe never payin' for your land."
He clenched and twisted the leather in his hands. "Listen, Delph," he said in a low voice between set teeth, "get this right once an' for always. I'm stickin' heresee. Always."
She heard his words, but they were weak, loud talk like that of a child frightened in the dark. She saw the terror in his eyes and understood it; she had felt the same a moment ago when it had seemed that all the brightness of their life together must die for the sake of a mortgaged farm. She tossed back the damp curls from her forehead, stood with arms akimbo and looked at him with neither love nor fear nor hatred in her eyes, only anger and the determination he should not stay. "You foolyou'll never make a go of it. Any fool can farmif he works his wife to death an' lives on nothin' an'no matter what you do you'll never pay that mortgage." She saw his eyes, wide and gray with terror for the future he saw the same as she did. He stood there knowing that she was right; his hands doubled into fists over the leather, fighting to hold out against reason a moment longer, but knowing he would lose in the end. "Think how it'll be ten years from now, still goin' on so."
"Shut up," he cried in a choked hard voice, and she knew with a gladness like a weakness that she had won.
It was only for him that she had talked so, turned on him like a wild woman. "You'll see, Marsh," she began, and looked down at his
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hands clenched over the piece of leather. "It's foolish to."
"Shut up," he said, and she felt the black leather hard against her cheek and forehead. Her head jerked backward and then forward. Then she was still, looking down at the hickory splints in the chair. There were no wordsnothing. She heard Marsh. "OhDelphDelph," with the words like drunken things staggering out of his throat.
She heard the leather fall to the floor but she did not raise her head. Marsh never beat his mules. She heard him again. "Delph I."
She bent her head over her hands on the chair back and looked at them. Something dripped on one,
and she watched a red stain spreadslowly until it touched the chair. Marsh was by her now, his hands on her shoulders. "Delphfor God's sake.I went crazyI." She crouched lower over the chair and would not look at him. He had no right to look at her. No one had ever seen her so. "Go away, please," she said.