To a God Unknown Page 5

  Elizabeth watched the door close behind him. "There is too big a crack under that door," she thought. "When the wind blows, a draft will come in under the door. I wonder if I should move to another house." She spread her skirt tightly down, and then drew her finger up the center so that the cloth adhered to her legs and defined their shape. She inspected her fingers carefully.

  "Now I am ready," she went on. "Now I am all ready to punish him. He is a bumpkin, a blundering fool. He has no manners. He doesn't know how to do things politely. He wouldn't know manners if he saw them. I don't like his beard. He stares too much. And his suit is pitiful." She thought over the punishment and nodded her head slowly. "He said he didn't know how to fence. And he wants to marry me. I'd have to bear those eyes all my life. His beard is probably coarse, but I don't think so. No, I don't think so. What a fine thing to go straight to a point. And his suit--and he would put his hand on my side." Her mind bolted away. "I wonder what I will do." The person who must act in the future was a stranger whose reactions Elizabeth did not quite understand. She walked up the stairs to her bedroom and slowly took off her clothes. "I must look at his palm next time. That will tell." She nodded gravely, and then threw herself face-downward on the bed and cried. Her crying was as satisfying and as luxurious as a morning's yawn. After a while she got up and blew out her lamp and dragged a little velvet-seated rocking chair to the window. Resting her elbows on the window-sill, she looked out into the night. There was a heavy misty dampness in the air now; a lighted window down the rutted street was fringed with light.

  Elizabeth heard a stealthy movement in the yard below and leaned out to look. There was a pounce, a hissing, rasping cry, and then the crunch of bone. Her eyes pierced the grey darkness and made out a long, low, shadowy cat creeping away with some little creature in its mouth. A nervous bat circled her head, gritting as it looked about. "Now I wonder where he is," she thought. "He'll be riding now, and his beard will be blowing. When he gets home he'll be very tired. And I'm here, resting, doing nothing. It serves him right." She heard a concertina playing, coming nearer, from the other end of the village, where the saloon was. As it drew close, a voice joined, a voice as sweet and hopeless as a tired sigh.

  "Maxwellton's braes are bonnie--"

  Two lurching figures were passing by. "Stop! You're not playing the right tune. Keep your damn Mexican tunes out of this. Now--Maxwellton's braes are bonnie--wrong again!" The men paused. "I wish I could play the blasted squeeze-organ."

  "You can try, senor."

  "Try, Hell. I have tried. It only belches when I try." He paused.

  "Shall we try again, senor, this Maxwellton?" One of the men moved close to the fence. Elizabeth could see him looking up at her window.

  "Come down," he pleaded. "Please come down." Elizabeth sat very still, afraid to move. "I'll send the cholo along home."

  "Senor, no 'cholos' to me!"

  "I'll send the gentleman along home if you'll come down. I am lonely."

  "No," she said, and her voice startled her.

  "I'll sing to you if you'll come down. Listen how I can sing. Play, Pancho, play Sobre las Olas." His voice filled the air like vaporized gold, and his voice was filled with delicious sorrow. The song finished so softly that she leaned forward to hear. "Now will you come down? I'm waiting for you."

  She shuddered violently and reaching up, pulled the window down, but even through the glass she could hear the voice. "She won't, Pancho. How about the next house?"

  "Old people, senor; eighty, nearly."

  "And the next house?"

  "Well, maybe--a little girl, thirteen."

  'We'll try the little girl thirteen, then. Now--Maxwellton's braes are bonnie--"

  Elizabeth had pulled the covers over her head, and she was shivering with fright. "I would have gone," she said miserably. "I'm afraid I would have gone if he had asked again."

  8

  JOSEPH allowed two weeks to pass before he went again to call on Elizabeth. The fall was coming hazily, graying the sky with high mist. Huge puffy cotton clouds sailed in from the ocean every day and sat on the hilltops for a while, and then retired to the sea again like reconnoitering navies of the sky. The redwing blackbirds massed their squadrons and practiced at maneuvering over the fields. The doves, unseen in the spring and summer, came from their hiding and sat in clusters on fences and dead trees. The sun, in its rising and setting, was red behind the autumn veil of air-borne dust.

  Burton had taken his wife and gone to a camp meeting in Pacific Grove. Thomas said, wryly, "He's eating God the way a bear eats meat against the winter."

  Thomas was sad with the coming winter. He seemed to fear the wet and windy time when he could find no cave to crawl into.

  The children on the ranch began to consider Christmas as not too far buried in the future for anticipation. They addressed guarded questions to Rama concerning the kind of conduct most admired by the saints of the solstice, and Rama made the most of their apprehension.

  Benjy was lazily ill. His young wife tried to understand why no one paid much attention

  There was little to be done on the ranch. The tall dry grass on the foothills was thick enough to feed the stock all winter. The barns were full of hay for the horses. Joseph spent a great deal of time sitting under the oak tree thinking of Elizabeth. He could remember how she sat, with her feet close together and her head held high, as though it was only restrained from flying upward by being attached to her body. Juanito came and sat beside him and looked secretly at Joseph's face to read his temper and to imitate it.

  "I might be having a wife before the spring, Juanito," Joseph said. "Right in my house here, living here. She'd ring a little bell when it came dinnertime--not a cowbell. I would buy a little silver bell. I guess you'd like to hear a little bell like that, Juanito, ringing at dinnertime."

  And Juanito, flattered at the confidence, uncovered his own secret. "I, too, senor."

  "A wife, Juanito? You, too?"

  "Yes, senor, Alice Garcia. They have a paper to prove their grandfather was Castilian."

  "Why I'm glad of that, Juanito. We'll help you to build a house here, and then you won't be a rider any more. You'll live here."

  Juanito giggled with happiness. "I'll have a bell, senor, hanging beside the porch; but a cowbell, me. It wouldn't be good to hear your bell and come for my dinner."

  Joseph tilted back his head and smiled up at the twisted branches of the tree. Several times he had thought of whispering about Elizabeth, but a shame at doing a thing so silly had forbidden it. "I'm going to drive to town day after tomorrow, Juanito. I guess you'll want to go with me."

  "Oh yes, senor. I'll sit in the buckboard and you can say, 'He is my driver. He is good with horses. Of course I never drive myself.'"

  Joseph laughed at the rider. "I guess you'd like me to do the same for you."

  "Oh no, senor, not I."

  "We'll go in early, Juanito. You should have a new suit for a time like this."

  Juanito stared at him incredulously. "A suit, senor? Not overalls? A suit with a coat?"

  "Why, a coat and a vest, and for a wedding present a watch-chain for the vest."

  It was too much. "Senor," Juanito said. "I have a broken cincha to fix," and he walked away toward the barn, for it would be necessary to think a good deal about a suit and a watch-chain. His manner of wearing such a costume would require consideration and some practice.

  Joseph leaned back against the tree, and the smile slowly left his eyes. He looked again into the branches. A colony of hornets had made a button on a limb above his head and around this nucleus they were beginning to construct their papery nest. To Joseph's mind there leaped the memory of the round glade among the pines. He remembered every detail of the place, the curious moss-covered rock, the dark cave with its fringe of ferns and the silent clear water flowing out and hurrying stealthily away. He saw how the cress grew in the water and how it moved its leaves in the current. Suddenly Joseph wanted to go to th
at place, to sit by the rock and to stroke the soft moss.

  "It would be a place to run to, away from pain or sorrow disappointment or fear," he thought. "But I have no such need now. I have none of these things to run from. I must remember this place, though. If ever there's need to lose some plaguing thing, that will be the place to go." And he remembered how the tall trunks grew up and how peacefulness was almost a touchable thing in the glade. "I must look inside the cave some time to see where the spring is," he thought.

  Juanito spent the whole next day working on the harness, the two bay driving-horses and the buckboard. He washed and polished, curried and brushed. And then, fearing he had missed some potential brightness, he went through the whole process again. The brass knob on the pole glittered fiercely; every buckle was silver; the harness shone like patent-leather. A bow of red ribbon fluttered from the middle of the whip.

  Before noon on the great day he had the equipage out, to listen for squeaks in the newly-greased wagon. At length he slipped the bridle and tied the horses in the shade before he went in to lunch with Joseph. Neither of them ate very much, a slice or two of bread torn in pieces and dropped in milk. They finished, nodded at each other and rose from the table. In the buckboard, patiently waiting for them was Benjy. Joseph grew angry. "You shouldn't go, Benjy. You've been sick."

  "I'm well again," said Benjy.

  "I'm taking Juanito. There won't be room for you."

  Benjy smiled disarmingly. "I'll sit in the box," he said, and he climbed over the seat and half reclined on the boards.

  They started off over the rough wheel-tracks, and their spirits were a little damped by Benjy's presence. Joseph leaned back over the seat. "You mustn't drink anything, Benjy. You've been sick."

  "Oh no, I'm going in to get a new clock."

  "Remember what I say, Benjy. I don't want you to drink."

  "I wouldn't swallow a drop, Joe, not even if it was in my mouth."

  Joseph gave him up. He knew that Benjy would be drunk within an hour of his arrival, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

  The sycamores along the creek were beginning to drop their leaves on the ground. The road was deep in the crisp brown fragments. Joseph lifted the lines and the horses broke into a trot, and their hoofs crashed softly in the leaves.

  Elizabeth heard Joseph's voice on the porch and hurried upstairs so she could come down again. She was afraid of Joseph Wayne. Since his last visit she had thought of him nearly all the time. How could she refuse to marry him even though she hated him? Some terrible thing might happen if she should refuse--he might die; or perhaps he might strike her with his fist. In her room, before she went down to the parlor, she brought out all her knowledge to protect her--her algebra and when Caesar landed in England and the Nicene council and the verb etre. Joseph didn't know things like that. Probably the only date he knew was 1776. An ignorant man, really. Her mouth pinched at the corners with contempt. Her eyes grew stern. She would put him in his place as she would a smart-alec boy in school. Elizabeth ran her fingers around her waist, inside her skirt, to make sure that her shirtwaist was tucked in. She patted her hair, rubbed her lips harshly with her knuckles to bring the blood to the surface, and last, blew out the lamp. She came majestically into the parlor where Joseph stood.

  "Good evening," she said. "I was reading when they told me you were here. Pippa Passes, Browning. Do you like Browning, Mr. Wayne?'

  He raked a nervous hand through his hair and destroyed the careful part. "Have you decided yet?" he demanded.

  "I must ask you that first. I don't know who Browning is." He was staring at her with eyes so hungry, so beseeching, that her superiority dropped away from her and her facts crawled back into their cells.

  Her hands made a helpless gesture. "I--I don't know," she said.

  "I'll go away again. You aren't ready now. That is, unless you'd like to talk about Browning. Or maybe you might like to go for a drive. I came in the buckboard."

  Elizabeth stared downward at the green carpet with its brown footpath where the pile had been worn through, and her eyes moved to Joseph's boots, glittering with daubed polish which was not black but iridescent, green and blue and purple. Elizabeth's mind fastened on the shoes and felt safe for a moment. "The polish was old," she thought. "He probably had the bottle for a long time and left the cork out. That always makes the colors in it. Black ink does the same thing when it's left open. He doesn't know that, I guess, and I won't tell him. If I told him, I wouldn't have any privacy any more." And she wondered why he didn't move his feet.

  "We could drive down by the river," Joseph said. "The river is fine, but it's very dangerous to cross on foot. The stones are slippery, you see. You must not cross on foot. But we could drive down there." He wanted to tell her how the wheels would sound, crushing the crisp leaves, and how a long blue spark with a head like a serpent's tongue, would leap from the crash of iron and stone now and then. He wanted to say how the sky was low this night, so low that one bathed one's head in it. There seemed no way to say such things. "I'd like you to go," he said. He took a short step toward her, and destroyed the safety her mind had found.

  Elizabeth had a quick impulse to be gay. She put her hand timidly on his arm and then patted his sleeve. "I'll go," she said, hearing an unnecessary loudness in her voice. "I think I'll like to go. Teaching is a strain. I need to be out in the air." She ran upstairs for her coat, humming under her breath, and at the top of the stairs she pointed her toe twice, as little girls do in a Maypole dance. "Now I am committing myself," she thought. "People will see us driving alone at night, and that will mean we are engaged."

  Joseph stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked upward, waiting for her to reappear. He felt a desire to open his body for her inspection, so that she could see all the hidden things in him, even the things he did not know were there.

  "That would be right," he thought. "Then she would know the kind of man I am; and if she knew that she would be a part of me."

  She paused on the landing and smiled down on him. Over her shoulders she wore a long blue cape, and some of her hair was loose from its puff and caught in the nap of the blue wool. A rush of tenderness came over Joseph for the loose hairs. He laughed sharply. "Come quickly before the horses fade," he said, "or the moment goes. Oh, of course I mean the polish Juanito put on the harness."

  He opened the door for her, and when they reached the buckboard he helped her to the rear seat before he untied the horses and fastened the ivory loops of their check reins. The horses danced a little, and Joseph was glad of that.

  "Are you warm?" he asked.

  "Yes, warm."

  The horses broke into a trot. Joseph saw how he could make a gesture with his arms and hands, that would sweep in and indicate and symbolize the ripe stars and the whole cup of the sky, the land, eddied with black trees, and the crested waves that were the mountains, an earth storm, frozen in the peak of its rushing, or stone breakers moving eastward with infinite slowness. Joseph wondered whether there were any words to say these things.

  He said, "I like the night. It's more strong than day."

  From the first moment of her association with him, Elizabeth had been tensed to repel his attack upon her boundaried and fortified self, but now a strange and sudden thing had happened. Perhaps the tone, the rhythm, perhaps some personal implication in his words had done it, had swept her walls cleanly away. She touched his arm with her fingertips, and trembled with delight and drew away. Her throat tightened above her breathing. She thought, "He will hear me panting, like a horse. This is disgraceful," and she laughed nervously under her breath, knowing she didn't care. Those thoughts she had kept weak and pale and hidden in the recesses of her brain, just out of thinking vision, came out into the open, and she saw that they were not foul and loathsome like slugs, as she had always believed, but somehow light and gay and holy. "If he should put his lips upon my breast I would be glad," she thought. "The pressure of gladness in me would be more than I
could stand. I would hold my breast to his lips with both hands." She saw herself doing it and she knew how she would feel, pouring the hot fluid of herself toward his lips.

  The horses snorted loudly and swung to one side of the road, for a dark figure stood in front of them. Juanito walked quickly beside the wagon to talk to Joseph.

  "Are you going home, senor? I was waiting."

  "No, Juanito, not for some time."

  "I'll wait again, senor. Benjy is drunk."

  Joseph twisted nervously in his seat. "I guess I knew he would be."

  "He is out on this road, senor. I heard him sing a little while ago. Willie Romas is drunk too. Willie is happy. Willie will kill someone tonight, maybe."

  Joseph's hands were white in the starlight, holding the lines taut, jerking forward a little when the horses flung their heads against the bits.

  "Find Benjy," Joseph said bitterly. "I'll be ready to go in a couple of hours." The horses leaped forward and Juanito sank away into the darkness.

  Now that her wall was down, Elizabeth could feel that Joseph was unhappy. "He will tell me, and then I will help him."

  Joseph sat rigid, and the horses, feeling the uncompromising weight of his clenched hands on the lines, slowed their trot to a careful, picking walk. They were nearing the ragged black barrier of the river trees when suddenly the voice of Benjy sounded from the cover of the brush.

  "Estando bebiendo de vino,

  "Pedro, Rodarte y Simon--"

  Joseph tore the whip from its socket and lashed the horses ferociously, and then he had to put all his force on the lines to check their leaping. Elizabeth was crying miserably because of the voice of Benjy. Joseph pulled up the horses until the crashing of their hoofs on the hard road subsided to the intricate rhythm of a trot.

  "I have not told you my brother is a drunkard. You'll have to know the kind of family I have. My brother is a drunkard. I do not mean he goes out and gets drunk now and then the way any man will. Benjy has the disease in his body. Now you know." He stared ahead of him. "That was my brother singing there." He felt her body jerking against his side as she wept. "Do you want me to take you home now?"