Strange Yesterday (28 page)

“I remember,” he mused, “that when I was first wounded, I thought I was here in the garden, because of the scent—”

His voice trailed away; he stood up and said, “Let us go inside, Inez.”

And in that manner he came back, as he had said he would come back, and after a time it seemed that he had not been away at all, so relentless was the garden, and the house, and the fields, and the Steer's Head in claiming anything that had once been under his fingers. He fell into his old ways, doffing his uniform for a loose white shirt and gray trousers; however, he slept in the house, and, as yet, he did not work, for his wound was not entirely healed. He found that there was a good pleasure in walking over the grounds, in sitting in the garden, or in perching himself upon the stone wall and puffing on his pipe. Sometimes, frequently in fact, he was with Inez, but, again, he would desire to be alone. In the quiet, he luxuriated; nor did he ever, after that very first day, attempt to reason out or to justify his position in the household. But by now he had come to be almost a part of the place. Even those people who came out of the north in their long cars never questioned him, but accepted him as they did the house or the hedge. And in the attitude of the servants, a certain deference had appeared. There were few servants; the place was so small. He still would come and sit in the kitchen, in the great, indented hearth, and often Inez would be with him. He would sit, and smoke, and say very little, watching, his gaze curiously intent, Mary going about her work. Once he dropped his pipe into the blaze, and, as there was a bar connecting the two large fire-dogs, he could not, with only a single hand, bend and reach for it, having nothing to balance himself by. She went across, and she picked it up for him, and as she gave it to him, she looked for a moment into his eyes, something passing over her face. From that time she was wonderfully good to him, though he could never quite understand.

And sometimes Frank would come in and crouch with him by the hearth, pulling upon an ancient corncob, his leather face as expressionless as the bare earth. Frank had not changed. Nothing had—except him.

Once Frank stopped him outside near the clump of apple trees. “Johnny,” the old man said; and John Preswick halted and waited. It was not often that Frank paused to speak.

“Johnny, how did you come by losing your arm?”

“A shell burst, and there was a piece of shrapnel. It struck me at the shoulder and raked downward and out. There were other pieces too, but there must have been one large one.”

“You never saw who it was tried to kill you, Johnny?”

“Never.”

“And he never saw you?”

“No.”

Old Frank folded back his lips against almost toothless gums, grinned, raised a hand and rubbed it to his wrinkled face, nodding his head. Then he shambled off. But of a night, when he sat with John Preswick in the kitchen, he would unbend still further and speak in a curious, disconnected way. If John Preswick had ever turned himself to listen, he might have drawn a meaning into the old man's words, but he paid no more attention to him than one does to the sighing of the wind, or the crunching of earth beneath one's feet.

Yet when Frank worked in the garden he found a certain tight satisfaction in watching him, in watching the angles of his brown hands, nimble, but clod-like. One time when Frank was clipping the hedge after having watered it until it sparkled like a high jade comb in the sun, he asked whether he might use the shears. But with his left hand he could not manage them, large and awkward as they were, and, something of a droop to his shoulders, he gave them back. Old Frank stared after him as he walked away.

And it was best to be by himself, to go off and sit beneath a tree, or to have the garden for his own. At times even Inez was too much. When he was alone, he could have something the others did not understand. He could think of many things: of the long, arduous training, of that single night in the trenches, of the hospital with the high windows, of the swaying back of the stretcher-bearer. They thought he desired to forget; but they understood so little.

And again he would sit in the room with the portraits, stare at them, at the one without the arm, at the boy. Frequently he would follow that by looking into a mirror. It was strange that already his hair should be graying, so young as he was. And it was strange that a yellow tinge was creeping into his skin, stretched so tightly over his cheekbones. He felt an active distaste for the straightening line of his lips.

His lips had been like a girl's, ready, eager for a smile; now they were hardening, hardening—

He thought, when he kissed Inez, that rightly she should have some disgust; but that was not so. He thought that his arm should have repulsed her; but it did not. She was an incomprehensible sort of a creature, more so now than ever. It was she who insisted that the marriage be put off no longer.

They were married in Charleston, a lonesome little wedding with no more than a dozen people there; and almost immediately after that they drove back to the Steer's Head. And that night he lay with her on his breast, and with her hair across his face. She was so soft, and frail, and as irresolute as a child; and as easy to sway as a child; and as easy to mold.

And life became this: to rise, to walk in the fields, to sit in the garden, to plant a little, to read in the evenings. It was a meaningless, a purposeless, an effortless existence; but, somehow, they never questioned it. It was not to be questioned; it was their life.

Before Inez's child was born, the old lady died. She would have preferred to live for the two remaining months, since she was quite confident that it would be a boy. For as long as she could remember there had been no boy in the line—not, indeed, since the time of the name of Preswick. But now, again, the name was Preswick, and she knew well it would be a boy.

Until the end, she was calm, in complete possession of her very brisk senses, and not uncheerful. Calling them in, she ordered the doctor and the nurses out and told them to sit one upon either side of her bed. Her room was a large one, being in the forward part of the left wing. When she was gone, she assured them, it should be theirs. From her window could be seen most of the slope to the Steer's Head and the hill itself. Now it was bathed in the heavy white light of morning.

“Yes,” she said to them, “the proper time to die is when the sun sets. But it is the first improper thing I have ever done, and there's no gainsaying but there's a pleasure to it. Not the dying, though. I'm afraid I shan't enjoy that, yet one can never tell—” As her voice wavered away, she glanced out of the window almost smiling.

“Look at the Steer's Head. One can see it now. At the traditional sunset time it is just a black blur. I haven't climbed the Steer's Head of late, not for years, I should say—so I have forgotten most of its magic, as an old woman forgets. Oh, yes, there is magic to the Steer's Head.…

“But enough of that. Inez, stay here until the end, for it really won't be long. You see, I told the minister not to dare set foot over the doorstep while you were here. He preaches, and that is an unforgivable fault in any minister. But I have never had the courage to say so until now. I am a wicked old woman—and loquacious. Look at me, John Preswick. Otherwise I shall tell you to go, and have them bring the portrait here instead. You have changed, John Preswick. It is hardly five years since you came, and yet one could no longer take you for the boy. Nor yet for the man. But in time, John Preswick, I dare say the other will come. I am almost glad that I shall not be here. John Preswick, who are you?—and from where? I shall never quite know that, though sometimes I imagine I do. Inez does, but she will never admit so much to you. She is a witch, Inez, though a rather pretty one. But perhaps I do know, even now—

“No, I am an old woman, talking her last nonsense. My tale was over, John Preswick, long, long ago, while men in gray and in blue were still killing each other in this part of the country. Why I have lingered on for so long I do not rightly know….”

She closed her eyes and did not open them again. In a little while she was dead. They would not have realized it, but John Preswick took a small mirror, held it before her mouth, and then nodded at Inez, who was sitting very straight in a chair.

He stood up; he went to the window, and there was the Steer's Head, bright and green with the sun. There was no wind, so he knew the branches of the oak on top would be still. When he turned to Inez, he found she had been looking at him.

“I guess we had better tell them now,” he said, going to the old-fashioned bed and drawing the curtains.

Rising, she walked toward the door. He followed after her, noticing how slowly she moved, being heavy with child, and how great the burden was for her, how slim she was, how small. He reached past her shoulder and opened the door; together they went out of the room.

12

T
HE
burying place was on the other side of the apple trees, between the orchard and the strip of woods. There were many graves, the inscriptions upon some being so old as to defy deciphering. Some of the tombstones had been broken off; others were simply crumbling with the weather. The very old ones, Inez said, dated to a time before her family lived in the house, but of that she was not entirely sure, so long had this been their place of residence. Yet there were so many of them that, servants included, and slaves previous to that, there were still graves to be accounted for. Some of the vague relations in the north had been notified, and they came down just in time for the obsequies. They stood in an uncertain, silent circle about the open grave.

They buried her next to her husband, who was directly beside Inez's father and mother. Her husband, a good deal older than she, had been with Jeb Stuart. Inez whispered that to John Preswick as Frank was dropping in the dirt. “She was terribly proud of it,” Inez said.

A buffet lunch, cold, was served for the guests, and then they got into their cars and drove away—as always. There was something about them to impress John Preswick with their transcience, although they belied that in a very material manner. At first he had not existed for them; now they were forced to half accept him. None of it struck John Preswick as unusual, for he knew of the house.

When they were gone, it was almost evening. John Preswick and Inez went into the garden with the minister, who lived a ways down the road. His name was Mr. Couvey, and it had been said that a daughter of his owned Wilfred James, an orchard man, for a sire, but of that no one was sure, though there was the child, the image of her suspected father, for proof. Without knowing just why, Inez related the entire half-humorous, half-sordid tale to John Preswick as they stood at the gate and saw the figure of the minister dwindle to his rocking stride. When he made a turn with the road and disappeared from sight, they went back to the garden and sat down upon one of the concrete-cast benches. Already the Steer's Head was in silhouette.

“She told me,” Inez reflected, “that I should not take on after her death, because there was the child to consider. She made me promise to keep on drinking cream, too, though I do detest it.”

John Preswick said: “The pinks are full. I shall tell Frank to cut most of them tomorrow and put them on the grave. He'll see to the planting of it himself.”

“Yes,” agreed Inez, “that will be nice.” She loved an old grave full of and sinking into the earth.

“And there is the check for the doctor. But he will expect to wait for a week or two. We'll have to take her room, for she wanted that; but we'll wait until the end of the month. She said her portrait is in the attic. If that is so, we ought to have it down and framed.”

Inez nodded. The sun was quick to set when once it had passed the Steer's Head; in a few minutes it would be twilight. Even from where she sat, she could scent the darting fragrance of the pinks.

13

A
WEEK
after that, the doctor came again, examined her, and ordered her to bed. The doctor, Paul Harthes, was an old man, watery blue eyes peering forth from beneath two heavy white brows. He had a long mustache that drooped to beneath his chin, and when he smiled, there were four yellow teeth to be seen. He still clung to his carriage and his two bay horses, and, making a call, the slow, even clipclop of his horses' hooves could always be heard far in advance. He drove up, closeted himself with her, tweaked her chin, accused her of avoiding cream and vegetables, and then made his way out into the garden where John Preswick was standing alone.

“You know,” he said to him, “she is going to have a mighty hard time of it.”

“They all did, didn't they?” John Preswick remarked.

“Her mother died of it. It was a question of saving either the mother or the child, and since her mother was the most miserable heart-sick woman I ever knew—why, I did as my conscience directed. Her father had been killed perhaps a month before that, and she narrowly escaped miscarriage.”

“And you think that she will die?” John Preswick asked steadily.

“Frankly, I don't,” the doctor declared. “She's a good little lass, and solid.”

John Preswick walked over to the gate and held it open; and he remained there until the sound of hooves had died in the distance. Then he began to pace back and forth across the garden, his single hand hooked into his belt. Before he went into the house, he picked a few roses.

“They are for you,” he smiled, bending over her bed. Very small she looked, and wan, and thin. Her dark brows stood out like pencil lines against the white of her skin, and her eyes were deep and entirely shadowed. Picking up her hand, he held it in his, studying it, thinking that it was almost transparent. Fingers and all, it was scarcely larger than the space of his palm.

“Do you know, John Preswick,” she said whimsically, “that this time it shall be a boy? Girls—oh, there have been so many. But now the name is ours again, John Preswick, and it shall be a boy.”