Part 12

Serena’s floor was not scrubbed, but my fireplace was neat once more, and my house shone with her occasional presence. Ben returned to week-day rags, but his Sunday trousers were always ready. Lonie lolled at home and picked the banjo, lazy indeed, but a vestal in no danger of perjure. Len found “satisfaction,” with Serena’s chair touching his in the firelight. He would grow thin again on coffee and untasted beans, but his smile would endure. Little Ross was happy with his mother’s arms waiting at any time. Of all the children he was the one that showed no improvement during Serena’s period of reformation. He might die of malnutrition, but tragedy--is it not the commonplace of life? And happiness the rare fortune? I questioned Serena for the hundredth time about the boy’s diet. Oh, yes, he was eating eggs right along. But this time I was not satisfied with a meagre affirmative.

“How many does he eat?”

“I don’t keep no count. He goes to the nest when he hears a hen cackle. You told me the fresher they was the better they was, an’ I told him he could have ’em soon as they’s laid. He brings ’em in, gits him a spoon o’ grease, an’ cleans the ashes off the fire-shovel an’ cooks ’em on it right then.”

“But he can’t get them soft that way.”

“Oh, he kain’t eat ’em soft like you showed me how to fix ’em, jelly all through. They make him sick thataway. I thought it wuz better fer him to eat a hard egg than no egg at all. He cooks ’em till they couldn’t be no harder ’thout burnin’ up. An’ he takes enough of ’em. I kain’t look around, seems like, ’thout seein’ him cookin’ one. He’s drinkin’ milk, too, only he ain’t had none sence yisterday ’cause we’ve been out o’ coffee, barrin’ the grounds I boiled over fer Len.”

“What has coffee to do with it?”

“He kain’t take milk less’n it’s about haf coffee. He learned to drink coffee when he was a baby, an’ he won’t take milk at all ef I don’t mix it up good with coffee. Then he’ll drink a lot of it. Yes, he takes plenty milk an’ eggs, but I kain’t see its heppin’ him a bit. He rolls about all night, an’ talks in his sleep, an’ gits up a-frettin’ till we kain’t stand him. I have to take him on my lap an’ nuss him like a baby ’fore he’ll quiet down. Len’s always sayin’, ‘Reenie, fer the Lord’s sake, take the pore little feller,’ an’ as soon as he gits on my lap he thinks he’s all right. An’ him ten year old. Ef the big uns git to be babies again I don’t know what I’m goin’ to do. I kain’t git on with my work a-settin’ backside to it all the time.”

But no one could smile in Serena’s heavenly way and at the same time be sincerely pining to get on with her work.

During her frictionally industrious year, the stream of company had somewhat lessened, but within a month after her return to the old smiling status it had resumed its normal flow. As time passed, the family larder was heavily, though genially, touched. The children’s winter store of “balanced rations” melted away in hospitable warmth, the cows dribbled their milk uncertainly, and if butter appeared on the breakfast-table, the small saucer was much augmented by a big bowl of gravy made of half-cooked flour and grease, which at least was “filling”; and so long as the holiday atmosphere prevailed, every one, family and visitors alike, was superbly indifferent to dietary monotony.

I did not resume my encouraging contributions, and probably this was taken as a hint of disapproval, which caused a slight tension between our houses. One day near dark, when I found that Serena had to provide for nine sleepers besides her own ten, I offered to take three of the small children home with me, and met a dignified refusal. She “wouldn’t think o’ troublin’ me noway.” I went home, my conscience narcotized, and feeling a sort of admiration for Serena’s resourcefulness. But about bedtime she appeared, a little crestfallen, and said: “I reckon I’ll have to let the young-uns come over this onct. Uncle Med Pace drapped in jest now with two o’ his boys, an’ I ain’t got another tick I can put down. Ef it wuzn’t sech a cold night I could make out with a pallet, but we need all the kivers on the beds.”

I told her I should be glad to have the children, perhaps overdoing my heartiness because of her evident compunction. When she left, to send them over, she observed the highland punctilio of asking me to accompany her and spend the night. This with no sense of the ludicrous. It was immemorial custom, from which any deviation, under any circumstances, would have seemed boorish.

The next time I was called upon to receive the overflow from her cabin there was less reluctance in her manner, and the third time it was done with such ease of spirit that I said testily: “Serena, why don’t you take boarders and get a little pay for your trouble?”

About a week afterward I passed Len’s on my way to Beebread. The house was a hundred yards distant from the main road, with only two gigantic apple-trees intervening. An old man, assisted by Serena, was removing plunder from a strange wagon before the door, but I knew better than to stop and investigate a happening so unusual. If I waited, I should eventually hear all about it; if I inquired, I should hear only the least that could be told me. Not to appear prematurely curious, I kept away from Len’s cabin for two or three days. Then I sauntered over. As I approached I heard screams so eerie, so full of anguish, that I ran staggeringly to the house and fell against the shut door. The windows had sheets pinned over them, and the door was carefully fastened with an inside bar. Years passed, it seemed, before Serena came to the door and made an aperture large enough to admit of her passage onto the porch.

“It ain’t nobody but pore little Viny,” she said. “Do you want to come in and see her?”

“Can I help you?” I asked faintly.

“No, there kain’t anybody do fer her but me. She told me before she took her spell what to do. I’ve got to git back to her now, but me an’ Len’ll be over to see you after supper.”

I walked feebly homeward, and waited. Serena and Len came a little late. She explained this by saying: “I have to be sort o’ behind with my supper ever’ other day now. Viny don’t git over her spell till it’s turned five o’clock. You know we’ve been tellin’ you for a long time about Uncle Mace Morgan’s girl, Viny.”

So they had, I dimly recalled.

“She’s been wantin’ to come an’ live with us ever sence her mother died a year ago, an’ Uncle Mace brought her up the mountain Wednesday, with her bed an’ things.”

No longer dimly, but in a flash of apprehensive light, I recalled the story of Viny Morgan. She was a cousin of Serena’s. When a child of thirteen, she had been the victim of a disease that had left her with a withered leg. The youngest of her family, and of an endearing disposition, she had tripped about happily on crutches until she was twenty-one. At that age she was stricken by a malady that produced acute crises of pain. As the years passed the pain increased and the crises came in regular periods every other day. For hours she would struggle in a crazed, semiconscious way, and only her mother could “manage” her at these times. After the mother’s death, the father did what he could for his daughter, while he kept looking about distractedly for some one to relieve him. Serena had the courage and the kindness, but deferred her consent, I think because she and Len in some vague way forefelt my protest.

“You know, Mis’ Dolly,” said Serena, “after you told me I ought to take boarders an’ git pay fer keepin’ folks, I thought ef there was anybody in the world I ought to take it was pore little Viny. She’s goin’ to give me five dollars a week, an’ she ain’t a bit of trouble only ever’ other day when she has her spell. Hit comes on around one o’clock an’ stays till about five, jest four hours is all it is, an’ I don’t have to do anything but set by her an’ rub her, an’ keep her from bitin’ me when the pain gits so bad she’s out an’ out crazy.”

“Serena, are you telling me that you can sit by her and hear her scream like that for four hours?”

“Her mother done it fer twenty year, an’ it wuz harder fer her than fer me. Somebody’s got to take keer of her, an’ Uncle Mace is mighty nigh dead over it. He kain’t hold out like a woman. Five dollars a week’ll hep us a lot. You can git them cloaks you wanted fer the childern, now I’ve got a way to pay you. Ef I can earn it adoin’ what the Lord tells us is our duty, I’m glad o’ the chaince. ’Fore you make up your mind about it, Mis’ Dolly, I want you to come an’ see Viny. Come when she’s feelin’ good, so you can get acquainted. The young-uns are plum foolish about her, an’ I kain’t keep ’em off her bed.”

“Where _is_ her bed, Serena?”

“It’s in the corner by the fireplace. It scrouges us a little, but Len fixed a bench at the foot o’ the bed, an’ the childern set on that an’ keep warm. There wuzn’t room fer Viny’s bed ’twixt mine and the girls’. Viny is shore sociable an’s been wonderin’ when you’ll come to see her. She can crochet the purtiest, an’ gits money fer it, but Uncle Mace don’t know it. Her mother left her a hundred dollars, all in five-dollar gold pieces, that she’d saved up aslippin’ eggs to the store, an’ sellin’ off chickens quiet, an’ makin’ rugs fer them summer folks at Carson. She told Viny to git more ef she could, an’ go to the hospital with it. Uncle Mace never would hear to her goin’, an’ that’s why Viny won’t tell him about the money. He says she’ll never come back alive, an’ he’s agin the hospital awful. He b’lieves the devil gits inter pore innercent Viny to punish him fer some meanness he done onct, an’ he says God will drive it out in His own time. I told him it looked like God would ’a’ put it in him ’stead o’ Viny, an’ he said it hurt him worse fer Viny to have it, an’ he had to work, bein’ a man. ‘You’re too old to work now,’ I told him, ‘an’ maybe if you prayed hard, the Lord would put it inter you an’ let Viny off fer a while,’ but he said it wuz best to let God work it out in his own way. Viny, though, she kinder wants to try the hospital, an’ that’s why she won’t tell him about the money. You’ll take to the pore little thing soon as you look at her, Mis’ Dolly. Len said the day Uncle Mace brought her up the mountain that we ought to go an’ see you first, but I told him I’d lived by you long enough to know what you’d say ’thout askin’.”

Her eyes were bright with appeal. Len was straining anxiously over her shoulder. What could I do but beat down my anti-Samaritan intellect and surrender them to their own undoing? I don’t remember what I said, but when they left me, and I held the lamp to light them across the little bridge in the yard, I saw that they were walking hand in hand, as they liked to do when sharing a supreme pleasure.

IV

I went to see Viny.

They had helped her from her bed to the fireside, and she talked, softly eager, while her slim hands were busy with a needle and Serena’s quilt-scraps. Without a knowledge of her age, I should have taken her for a frail girl in her twenties. She had the profound gentleness and mystic smile of one recently released from intolerable pain. They were all proud of her. Lonie took her advice as to the pattern of a new dress. Ned brought her an enormous apple whose keeping qualities he had been testing. Len came to the house for a drink when he could more easily have gone to the spring, because he had thought of something that would make Viny laugh.

Her illness was not mentioned until some one spoke of her mother’s long devotion. Then her warm, hazel eyes were lit with idolatry.

“At first,” she said, “my attacks come hit or miss, and it was awfully hard for mother to plan her work. She had everything to do at home, and no help except father. They were all married off but me. I prayed fer my spells to come reg’lar, and after a while they did. Then mother could lay out her work, and get on all right.”

Her disease was terribly real, there was no doubt of that; but I wondered if, through concern for her mother, she had actually psychologized her crises into periodicity.

When I left the house Serena accompanied me a few steps. Len joined us, eager to know what I thought of Viny, and it was easy to say all that they were longing to hear.

“I knowed you’d like her,” said Serena. “She offered me one of her five-dollar gold pieces to-day, an’ I was ashamed to look at it, knowin’ all about her savin’ up fer the hospital. I made her put it back in that little bag she carries her money in. She don’t eat but onct a day. Then it’s only a little butter an’ a ’tater. I couldn’t think o’ chargin’ her fer a ’tater. Sometimes she’ll taste an egg, but she brought three hens, an’ I git more o’ the eggs than she does. She brought her own bed an’ kivers, so I kain’t charge her fer sleepin’. She lays there, not botherin’ anybody, an’ ever’ other day when she’s not out of her mind, she heps me piece quilts, an’ I kain’t tell you the things she’s patched.”

“Perhaps you ought to pay _her_, Serena,” I said, but the irony did not penetrate.

“She wouldn’t let me do that. She says it’s only right fer her to hep me. No, she wouldn’t take pay fer piecin’ an’ patchin’.”

I was about to ask Serena why she couldn’t let Viny pay her for the service she received, but happily for me, I was forestalled by Len.

“Anybody,” he said, “that would take pay from Viny fer the leetle mite she eats would be so stingy they’d screak. An’ Reenie kain’t charge fer waitin’ on her. Ef there’s anything plain in the Bible it’s how we ought to take keer o’ the sick.”

“About them cloaks, Mis’ Dolly, you got fer Ray an’ Lissie,” Serena remembered to say, “I’ve studied out how I can pay you back by makin’ a fire an’ milkin’ fer you when the weather’s bad. I reckon that would suit you same as money.”

“Oh, a lot better, Serena!”

“I thought you’d like that,” she said, with a countenance as joyful as if the debt were already paid.

As the weeks passed I found there was only one objection to Viny as a member of the household. Her “bad day” interfered with company, particularly if it fell on Saturday or Sunday. During her attacks, light and sound were like blows, and before entering on her torture she would implore Serena to keep the room darkened and silent. This meant that family and guests had to crowd around the little kitchen stove, impossibly subdued, until Viny “come out of it.” At those times I avoided the house and its immediate region. Never in my life had I watched the calendar so closely, fearing that I might make a mistake and hear those screams again. But once I ventured over on a “bad day,” waiting until five o’clock, when Viny would be “getting through.” I listened and heard only a low moaning. Serena let me in. Viny’s pretty head was weaving agonizedly, and in her broken moans I could distinguish an anguished appeal for help. “She’s bearable easy now,” said Serena, returning to the task of rubbing her patient’s head and arms and back.

I went to the bed and looked at Viny. Of her eyes, only the whites could be seen. It was hard to believe that within an hour they would be soft, dark, intelligent. The sight was too ghastly, and I retreated to the porch. After a few moments Serena came out.

“She’s still now,” she said. “She’ll lay there quiet fer haf an hour, then she’ll be all right, only awful weak.”

I looked closely at Serena. It was clear that she was failing. “You can’t hold up at this,” I said, grasping at the commonplace.

“I could ef folks would change off with me onct in a while. I could hold up fine. But what you reckon that ol’ Ann Hite said when I sent her word I’d wash fer her ef she’d come an’ stay with Viny jest once? She said it ’ud take a year’s washin’ to pay fer that.”

“Serena,” I said, firmly defensive, “you needn’t look about for people as good as you are. They don’t exist.”

“I tried to slip out from Viny the last time, an’ let Lonie stay with her, but it wuzn’t more’n two er three minutes ’fore Lonie come runnin’ out cryin’, an’ showed me her wrist bleedin’ where Viny bit her. Viny cried awful about it when she come to, but Lonie won’t try it any more, so I’ll jest keep at it. I ain’t got to come over an’ hep you any ’bout milkin’ an’ makin’ fires, but you see how it is, an’ I reckon you don’t blame me. I’m studyin’ out how I’ll pay you some time.”

“Don’t speak of it again, Serena,” I replied, thankful to have escaped the degradation of lying in bed and letting her come around the curve in the freezing weather to milk for me.

A month, perhaps, went by, and the influenza began to climb the mountain. As it drew nearer, I thought of Len’s household, with two invalids already in the crowded cabin, and the prospect took my breath. One morning about daylight I heard Len’s voice calling me, and hurried down the stairs to hear the worst.

“Reenie wuz took last night. Looks like she’s goin’ to git bad off. An’ I’ve come to ast you whatever’ll I do about Viny?”

“Is this her bad day, Len?”

“No, that thing don’t tech her till to-morr’.”

I knew what he was expecting me to say, but I launched a surprise that astounded him.

“Then hitch up as quickly as you can, put her things in the wagon, and take her back to her father.”

His lips made two or three quivering attempts at speech. “I thought maybe you’d----”

“No, Len. I can’t take care of Viny. I _won’t_ take care of Viny. And the only thing you can do about it is to take her back to her father.”

“I reckon I’ll have to,” he said, in dazed dejection.

“How long will it take you to get off?”

He glanced at the first rays of the sun, then said: “Two hours’ll do.”

“Then in two hours I will be over to say good-by to Viny and take care of Serena until you get back.”

He went, his long, stooped back plainly telling me that I had been weighed in the balance and struck the beam of heaven.

For about two weeks I was kept in close attendance on Serena and the children. Just as they were getting up, it came my turn to go down. Neighbors, far and near, were ready with kind help, but it was not until Serena walked in, a little pale yet from her own convalescence, and looked down at me with her blue eyes almost hazel dark with feeling, that the temperature of the pillow under my head dropped to a hopeful point. The bland movements of her hands seemed to be fulfilling an old desire. Behind her was the generation of Uncle Lish, who could sit and sing till the fire was out; and hovering with her presence was the never-defined equation that rescues from loneliness the edge of the grave. It did not trouble me to know that on my recovery I was going to be as foolish about Serena as Len and her children.

After I could sit in my chair, it was as good as hearing gentle music just to see her on the other side of the fire, her hands in her lap, with the placidity of eternity doing nothing at all. One day she spoke of Viny.

“I reckon you was right about Viny. I didn’t know how scrouged we wuz till I got to stayin’ over here with you. Seems like they’s more’n as many agin of us now, an’ when we all try to git around the fire, some of us kain’t see the blaze, let alone feel it. When they’s company the childern have to set back so fur they’re too cold to git their lessons.”

It was then that the vague trouble about those two unbuilt rooms crystallized in my mind with unbearable clearness. By some economical turn or twist, I would get them put up.

“Serena,” I said, “I’m going to have enough lumber hauled up the mountain to make two more rooms at your house, and I’ll have Cleve Saunders build them if Len can’t get the time.”

“Oh,” she cried joyously, “me an’ Len wuz sayin’ last night how fine that would be! I reckon he’d better not go after pore little Viny till you git ’em done.”

VIII

A PROPER FUNERAL

I

We were on our way to see Uncle Nathe Ponder buried. Serena was as happy as she could be with decency, considering our solemn destination. She had not been away from home for several months, and her joyous reaction could be suppressed only intermittently. But, at any time, her laughter was pleasantly low of key, as if she were softly trying it out before subjecting you to the full flow that never came.

And Serena was infectious. I had set out with my mind meditatively intrenched on the going down of men into the grave; the passing of man himself, of earth, of suns, of systems, with no full-grown hope of any immortal salvage; but Serena, pulsingly aware in a significant world, soon restored me to stature as a member of a community bent on giving due honor to one whose days among them had been spent with the vividness that amounts to virtue among a people who look to life for their drama instead of the stage and the morning papers.