Between the Flowers: A Novel

  Juber strangled over the tobacco juice he unexpectedly swallowed. "God, Delph, you can't ride Silver. If he didn't run away an' break your neckwe'd be kilt all th' same by John for lettin' you try it."

  She tossed back her hair and reached for the saddle. "I mean to ride him. I thought of it at supper.Just once in my life I'm goin' to do somethin' I want to do." She lifted the saddle from its peg and staggered under its downdropping weight. Juber hurried forward and took it, but when he turned to rehang it on the wall, she caught his wrist and repeated through set teeth, "Juber, I said saddle Silver."

  He stopped and studied her, then slowly took the saddle from the wall, and sighed,"Delph, it's a mighty good thing you didn't live back in th' old days. They'd a hung you for a witch sure from seein' th' hell fire a blazin' in your eyes."

  She laughed at that and spun on her toes. "It'll be fun ridin' Silver, jumpin' him over Hedricks' five barred gate like I've always wanted to."

  "Your wild ways 'ull be th' death a you," he said, and hesitated like a man caught between two fires. "Delph, pleasehe's hard mouthed as a mule an wild as a buck in th' springJumpin' over little ditches 'stead a steppin'. Why, you know I'd never risk him myself."

  "You're you an' I'm me," she said, and pushed him playfully toward Silver's stall. "We'd better be goin' 'fore Uncle John comes out to make his round a th' barn. I'll watch an' if I hear him I'll whistle."

  Juber came at last; his hat off and his usually smooth hair in uneasy rings and strands, and his shirt tail pulled out from his overalls by his strainings and strivings to get the big horse saddled. Delph had to laugh at Juber. It was more as if Silver led Juber than the other way around, for though Juber came with one hand on Silver's throat

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  latch and the other on his check strap, the rearing plunges of the white stallion lifted him now and again from the ground. Delph's eyes glistened as she looked at Silver, seeming bigger and whiter and wilder than ever by moonlight. She watched the drawing in and out of his nostrils, the cold fire flash of his eyes, then called to Juber, "Wait," and ran and opened the big road gate, and came running back, laughing, flinging her hat over Juber's bare head. Silver plunged and snorted at the hat falling so near his nose. "Snort on," Delph said, and caught the pommel of the saddle. Silver shied away in a rearing plunge, but Delph leaped, and clung, one foot in the stirrup and the other, careless of her flying skirts, cutting a wide arc in the air.

  Then she was on and saying to Juber, "Give him his head," but Juber clung to the bridle and moaned, "God you'll never manage him, Delph. Try to wait for me."

  "I don't mean to manage him," she said, and jerked the bridle free. They were away then, through the gate and down and around the hill.

  It was dark on the hill road, but Silver was never one to be afraid of the dark. The great horse seemed a part of herself, something that felt the promise of change in the frosty cold, felt the foolish hurt and sorrow at the death of the flowers, saw life as a long straight road through a prison yard with a door marked death at the end, and the door a stranger, brighter thing than the road; and so they would run away from it all.

  His iron shoes rang sharp and clear on the rocky road like bells in the frosty air. Now and then he favored the edge of the road, but Delph crouched low in the saddle and only laughed when the beech boughs whipped through her hair and pulled the smooth neat braids out of place. They reached the floor of the valley and rode between John's fields of bottom land corn where the great fodder shocks stood like fat contented men, each with a round of black shadow like a carpet by his feet.

  They forded the creek with no foolishness and no lagging back, but plunging right in, never minding the showers of flying drops and spray from Silver's hearty lunge.

  Delph drew her breath in a long happy sigh when they had crossed the creek, and reached the valley road that lay empty and

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  white and smooth like a challenge to Silver to show what he could do. She had no switch, but when she dug her heels into his sides that was enough. He took the bit in his teeth and ran, stretched his neck and lengthened his stride, until Delph felt the night wind whistle by her ears and Silver's flying mane tangle with her own hair and lash against her face. And the shadows of the trees that grew along the road seemed flying bands of darkness, no sooner in her eyes than gone.

  She wished the road would last forever, or that she could follow it to some new strange place where all would not know her as Delphine Costello, the only Costello, save John, who hadn't gone away, but one that would go when she was twenty-one and so run no risk of being brought back. Still, the ending of the road was pleasant to think upon. At least she could jump the Hedrick gate before she went to work quietly with the others about the bonfires among the piles of cane.

  She wondered a moment if she could turn Silver into Hedrick's lane, or maybe he would go dashing on, over the bridge and past Mrs. Crouch's store. She wondered if he would really jump the gate or shy and whirl away when he came upon it, or maybe stop suddenly and fling her over his head. But whatever he did, she didn't mind. They neared the lane, and from somewhere near the end and by the gate, a horse neighed loudly in greeting, and Silver turned as if by his own free will.

  Delph could not bother to wonder over the horse by the lane; its neigh had a familiar sound. The gate was there, rising dim from the shadow of a walnut tree by it. She lifted the reins and leaned back low in the saddle, and for a split second Silver seemed to hesitate, then she felt him rise as if he flew, and it was fun to see the gate flying under her, and then the black shadow of it, rising as if to strike her. She felt the shock of his landing, and there was a moment when he wavered as if he would pitch on his knees, then he was up and she had an instant's taste of triumph in knowing she had jumped the five barred gate.

  The white back of a badly frightened cow loomed suddenly under Silver's nose. He snorted and whirled and bucked like a thing gone mad and flung Delph from him as easily as he had cleared the gate, then circled wildly about the barn. Delph landed cat-like with

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  both feet on the ground, and stood looking dazedly after Silver and was unable to answer Marsh's frantic calls from Jude by the lane, "Delph, you all right? Delph?"

  He swore at the tricky gate, mastered it at last, and rushed through, leaving the gate to swing free. He glanced wildly about the barnyard, until Delph found her tongue at last, and said, still looking after Silver, "Hehe got away."

  Marsh ran to her and caught her shoulders, still asking, "You hurt, Delph?"

  She laughed to hear the old man terror in his voice, afraid for her as Juber was afraid. "Delph, I thought you'd broke your fool neck," he whispered, and all at once she felt weak and timid, glad Silver had not broken her neck, almost afraid to ride him again. Marsh was kissing her, and his kiss more than the wild free ride on Silver cleared all sorrow and hunger and emptiness from the world. She was still a moment in his arms, then struggling, laughing, remembering in a thousand ways that she was young and strong, and life was good.

  "You'd better go shut th' gate," she said, and teased, "Th' Hedrick cows are all runnin' down th' lane."

  He looked over his shoulder, but did not move. "If there's cows in th' lane, they're colored like th' wind," he answered, and turned back to her.

  "What is a wind colored cow?" she asked, and knew she must send him after Silver, but wanted this bit of time so close with him to last a moment longer.

  He smiled at her, but with something stern and sober in his smile with his eyes black in the moonlight, and his chin outlined sharply like a chin cut in stone. "It's th' kind a cows my people had. My father had a sayin', 'Our fine blue-blooded horses an' our big fine cows are in our big fine barn but they're colored like th' wind.' What in th' hell do they mean lettin' you ride a horse like Silver?"

  She laughed and tried to draw away. "I just rode himfor fun."

  "Promise me you'll not be up to such foolishness again," he begged, and gave her hands a g
entle shake.

  She smiled at that. "I hate promises.Think if I'd promised th' church an' joined. I could never a run away to that dance."

  "You're stubborn," he said, and kissed her again, then turned quickly away after Silver, who was at the other end of the barn,

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  quietly helping himself to fodder intended for the Hedrick cows, no longer frightened as he had pretended to be, but suddenly tired and tame.

  Since it would never have done for Delph to ride alone to the cane field, a good half mile away, and since Marsh could not take her there, the only thing that they could do was sit on a shadowy corner of the fence and wait for Juber. It was some few moments before Marsh recovered his wits enough to remember his reason for coming. He burst out with it while Delph was laughing at his cunning in persuading Mrs. Crouch to persuade John to send Delph down to Hedrick's. "I won't be goin' away 'til spring, Delph," he said, and added confusedly, "II thought you'd like to know."

  All Delph's fear of a long quiet winter dissolved like mists before a sun. She was quick to reassure him when he spoke of doubts that his was the proper plan. He had asked for and been given the job of pumping and looking after the wells drilled during the summer. The pay would be small, good enough for some, but little compared to what he had been making; still, he would have plenty of time left for doing all the things he liked to doespecially for exercising Jude in the woods, he whispered to Delph.

  She was of the opinion that Tilly would profit by long winter rides over near the wells, but thought that maybe at least by Christmas Time she could persuade John to let Marsh come visiting her as Logan had.

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  5

  The cold snap that Juber said had come only to ripen the corn was past. It was November, a time of leafless trees and languid yellow light falling lazily onto the hills that lay as if asleep under a faint blue veil of smoke. The sun seemed slyly dying day by day, the flaming dawns of early fall were gone, and in their place came the sunrise, pale blue and gold; sad it seemed to Delph. The sunsets, too, were dull and dead, endless banks of clouds above the rows of marching hills.

  There were long days of slow cold rain that never sang or hummed like the spring rains or summer thunder showers, but fell straight down with a lifeless regularity that changed the barnyard and the bottom fields into seas of mud and left the last of the yellow beech and poplar leaves gray and flat and sodden. Delph had always loved the rain; had liked to see it ride over the hills, and enjoyed the bit of variety it added to the weather, but now she hated it. Rainy days could not be brightened by thoughts of a chance meeting with Marsh. Fronie would have been scandalized at the thought of any woman walking or riding in the rain just for the walk or the ride. It was bad enough for Delph to ride about so much on fair days, but to have let her go off in the rain would have set all the neighbors talking.

  So Delph sat by the fire and sewed, or rummaged in her own room trying to find a book she had not read, or spent long minutes by her front room window that opened on a wide view of the hills. She knew she could not see Marsh through the walls of mist and rain that wrapped the Little South Fork Country, but he seemed nearer when she stood by the window than when she sat by the fire.

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  Fronie found her so early one afternoon, and grumbled at her lazy, day-dreaming ways, and wondered why she didn't read a good book or some of Tennyson's poems or sew. ''Why don't you get out that dress pattern a blue wool John bought last time he was in Town. It'll be mighty becomin' to you.''

  "What's th' good a lookin' pretty here?" Delph answered shortly, and Fronie turned away in disgust.

  When her aunt had gone, she walked restlessly about, took books from their shelves by the bed, opened first one and then another and returned each to its place; they were all so old, so solid, smelling of dust and saddle leather and she had read them all, just as her grandfather before her had read them; Thackeray, Emerson, Swedenborg, W. O. Barnes. She stopped and looked at a dog-eared copy of Tennyson, once the property of her mother. She opened the book, and the pages fell apart to a much thumbed spot, and she read:

  On either side the river lie

  Long fields of barley and of rye,

  That clothe the world and meet the sky;

  And thro' the field the road runs by

  To many-tower'd Camelot;

  And up and down the people go,

  She closed the book swiftly and shoved it on the shelf. She would never be a Lady of Shalott, feeding herself on pictures when just past her was the world.

  She went to the window that opened on the side yard, and opened it and leaned far out, and let the rain fall on her hair, then turned and let the drops strike her face and splash into her eyes. She amused herself a moment with staring up into the sky; a thing she had done as a child when she had stood on tiptoe and strained her eyes until the blue glimmered like mother-of-pearl, and still there was never that finding of the top of the sky. Juber and Old Willie had used to tell her stories of the beings who lived there, and she had believed and gone hunting the top of the sky.

  "Hey, Delph."

  She turned quickly and waved to Juber calling from the barnyard. "You workin' hard, Delph?" he asked, cupping his hands and seeming eager to make himself heard by her alone.

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  She shook her head and dropped her hands to show their emptiness. "Come out to th' barn. I've got somethin' to show you," he called in the same guarded way.

  She threw an old coat about her shoulders and tip-toed down the back stairs and through the empty kitchen. "It's come," Juber cried when she came up to him. He hugged his jumper about his meager chest and smiled a delighted unbelieving smile.

  "What's come?" she asked, and teasingly tried to pull open his tightly clasped jumper.

  "Don't tell me now you don't recollect when you made out th' order an all. It's th' book of song ballads we ordered with thirty-five cents an' coffee coupons. Recollect? I'd give it up for lost. It's got 'Lorena' an' 'Frankie an' Johnnie.'" He opened his jumper slightly. "Look, a finer lookin' book you never saw, all covered in yeller paperbut I dasn't take it out here in th' rain. Soon's th' mail come in Permelie sent it up to me. Wasn't that nice a her?"

  "Who brought it?"

  He smiled slyly. "That oil man. He's at th' other end a th' barn now tryin' to count Linnie's pigs.Wait don't go runnin' away. Soon's I git in th' dry I'll let you see.I want you to hum some a these fer me while I try to foller 'em on my fiddle."

  "Come on, I'll hum," she called over her shoulder, but Juber, all forgetful of the rain, came walking on with his eyes on the book and could not keep up with her.

  She tip-toed down the long barn hall, noiselessly opened the stable door that led to Linnie's pen. She saw Marsh with his hat pushed to the back of his head, and his elbows on the low partition separating the sty from the rest of the stable. He had a big white ear of corn in his hands from which now and then he shelled a few grains and flung them into the pen. He and Linnie seemed to have been having a quarrel. The great sow lay and looked at him and batted her eyes and grunted now and then in a half quarrelsome, half contented sort of way, as if to say she would continue to quarrel if he wished, but it was useless because she had the best of him.

  He flung another handful of grain enticingly near her nose, and tried again. "Come on, Linnie, roll over, get up, move. I want to count your pigs," but Linnie only grunted again, more agreeably than before. Her pigs except two that tried in vain to reach her teats

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  lay sleeping at her sides with their black noses, black feet and white tails so tangled and mixed that there was no counting them, "There's twelve," Delph called, and both Marsh and Linnie jumped and looked in her direction.

  Marsh hurried forward, but guiltily, as if half afraid that Delph would scold him. "You don't mindjust this once, comin' to your house. Permelie would have me bring Juber's song bookan' so I thought I'd wait a spell in th' barn till th' rain slacked. They surely won't mindth
is once," he begged, and came and caught her hands.