Part 8

A new person had come to the town while Catherine was still making felt her departure, a strange face with no predecessors. A man, Captain Agnew, had bought a farm at the end of one of the streets, and his daughter, Florence, was presently seen driving about the town in a motor vehicle. She was a large girl, rich in the splendors of vitality, deep of chest and strong of limb. Her eyes were bright and her lips easily flowing. She flung her looks everywhere, careless of them, abundantly centered within herself. Theodosia saw her here and there over the town and talked with her at some gathering. She thought of her again and again as she practised the trills, her present occupation, and she experimented to try to visualize the new face with its looks, its beauty, its rapid sequence of smiles, frowns, and infinities of gesture. The new face had printed itself more cleverly than any other into her mind, and she herself smiled often, remembering the vivid picture that was clear and firm in determination. The new girl had moved swiftly into the life of the town, for in a few days she was seen everywhere. “Is it because she is new to me that I remember her looks?” Theodosia asked herself, waking out of sleep, and suddenly a clear image of Florence, as clear as reality, stood in the core of her inner vision.

It was a puzzle—Florence to be so keenly felt as to retain her pictured form in absence. Theodosia ran swiftly with the spring. Her long slender legs delighted in the daily walk, and in a few weeks there would be tennis on the courts at the Seminary. Stiggins spread onto her mind once as a flat unrecognized affront. Walking past the stable swiftly one bright day she saw his hand as it bent over the collar of a mule to slip a pad into place, a long slender hand, powerful and cunning, like her own hand but more powerful and more steadily placed to its task. The tawny fingers dragged knowingly over the buckles of the collar and then his face, viewed momentarily, was searched carelessly in the swift moment of a passing. “Between thee and me there is a great gulf fixed,” she thought, and the hour swept quickly by, having gathered nothing from the moment which was dominated by the dark accidental hand.

Florence Agnew grew daily into a personality, heard and felt as well as seen. Hers was a sensual voice, heavy with tone, low, trailing away into finalities. Her body was luxury-loving and radiantly indolent, using but a modicum of its intense vitality for her goings and comings. Her perfect teeth flashed their smile from between her rippling lips and she was alive to the ends of her animal being, which was set to have the best of the town for its own. Her hair was puffed and curled to be a gauze of rippling midnight over her head.

* * * * *

Jane Moore could do nothing with the Bach. She shook her head self-indulgently at the piano arrangement as if the music were some light joke to confound the keyboard. She touched a key here and there with her fingers but in the end she shrugged as if Bach were a responsibility she could not be asked to assume. Her hat was bright for the spring that delayed, out-dating the spring with its flowers and fragile crêpe. She wanted to talk of Florence continually, and she quoted her with an admiration which would fall suddenly under amused contempt or shock but would build itself back again in the charm of the unfamiliar. She went daily where Florence went, or she would retail to Theodosia the witty sayings and bold sallies that issued from the flame around which she was impelled to hover.

The days went hurriedly, the birds in the trees at dawn making a continuous breathless fluting, the mockingbird loudest and most insistent. Albert had gone far into the country, traveling from farm to farm, visiting the smaller villages, or he made farther journeys into outlying counties. Theodosia played trills looking at her thin lips in the tall glass of the parlor, searching her lips and her face there.

She had seen Florence that day with a group of people at the pool beyond the town where boats were paddled about. She gave the top of her mind to the trill, the finger pressed firmly down on the string, but underneath a voice recounted Albert’s words, hurled them out between the running web of the trill. “Some day I aim to smash that old fiddle into the middle of perdition.” Her fingers were joyous over the trill; she and her fingers were one and they would ride together on the top of the world. She comprehended Florence then and dwelt upon her minutely, saw her quick smile that knew all the inner part of a man or of a woman. Albert’s voice again: “You’re too full of joy. I aim to take some of the joy out of you.” The bird tones of the trill crashed over the words and lanced each one with a sharp dart. “Two months from now I aim to do’t. Take your time.” She had spent a month with the scales and then had set upon the harmony again, mornings when her pencil dribbled small black egg-shaped dots on the scaffolding set up by the staff and bound them together with a swift down-stroke, her ear hearing tone set upon tone in a fullness of design, the fear in her inner thought, but the fear had slunk away before her new joy and it was now only a dim thing, abstracted, unremembered, too remote to visit any image. Florence Agnew spread pleasure over the town and over the bodies of men and women, and all were more intensely alive. “A week now, I give you. The kind of lover you’ll want. I’ll close in against the week’s done,” the words met the bird-singing of the trill that twittered over them and brooded them in kindness. Her mind was suffused with half-knowing, drunk with sense, but her fingers knew their cleverness and the trill lived on while she floated in the reality of consenting fiber and essence. “His strength, it’s what I need after all,” she said wisely, looking at the chin-piece of the instrument, looking at the threads of the bow, her mouth speaking coolly above the languor of her blood. A day two weeks earlier reappeared to be lived more minutely than in its first appearing, and another day later. The present week cried out for recognition; he had sent her a note from Corinth and another from Mayfair Church. He had called her by the telephone the night before, “To hear the sound of you again,” saying, and “Three days and I’ll come back. Mark on your calendar, you better.” The voices became entirely real:

“You better mark on your calendar. It’ll be a red-letter day, against I come, red for you.”

“Will it?”

“You’ll see. If you hadn’t wanted me you would ’a’ stopped me long ago. You can’t say I didn’t warn you. You’ll see.”

“Will I?”

“You’ll see in three days’ time.”

* * * * *

Conway was coming into the parlor, her “Come” making a recitative as she sang it against the continued trill. He looked at her appealingly and stopped his ears against the shrill high notes.

“Getten ready for a contest?” he asked.

“What you want now?”

“You think too much about Albert. Too much to suit me.”

“Albert makes me think. He’ll be back tomorrow for sure.”

“He’s back today. He came back about one o’clock this evening to meet some men here from up the state. Town’s full of men from up around Fayette.”

“Is he? A sudden change, a new plan. He talked to me last night. He was out at Johntown.”

“It’s about time you thought about me a little.”

“I think about you fifty times a day, Connie.”

“Call it fifty.”

Conway gathered into his unspecified vagueness and sat distraught in his chair, or he arose and stepped lightly about the room, moving a curtain here or drawing a bowl into the light of the setting sun, closing a shutter, pushing the chair of the blue brocade into the kindest manifestation of the light.

“What’s the good of fifty? What kind of fifty.”

“I think about you every time I think at all.”

“If you marry Albert I’ll go off and never come back. This town, it’ll never see a sight of me again.”

“I wouldn’t want you to go.”

“Go, I will, you’ll see.”

“Well.”

“I’m like that. I couldn’t bear to see you marry Albert. I couldn’t bear it. I’ll go so far this town’ll never hear a buzz of me while time lasts.”

“Marry? That’s a long way off. I wasn’t thinken about marry.”

“Go I will. You’ll see. A long piece from here. You’re the only thing that keeps me here, you and my brother Reg.”

Reg was a good friend, a fine boy, she admitted. She looked vaguely at the passing sunlight, speaking aimlessly of Reg.

“I don’t care much for a whole mob of people. Don’t wish nobody no harm, but all the same ... I like you better’n anybody else on earth. I like a few people in a big way. You and Reg most. You most of all. It came to me about a month ago I liked you best, and nothing else I ever did in life amounted to a rap. It seems like nothing else I ever did mattered nohow. That’s how I look at it. I been studyen it out a right smart the last few weeks. Not one other God’s thing I ever done matters now. No matter what ’twas.”

She arose quickly and walked toward the door. Albert would be coming then, soon, the day’s work over. Conway walked toward the door beside her.

“Kiss me,” she said, leaning slightly near. “You will kiss me and go now. Albert will be here soon. I have to go on an errand for Grandfather. I don’t know what I’ll do. I haven’t been thinken about what you’re talken about. You kiss me. Good-bye, Connie.”

* * * * *

Albert had come back then, sooner than he had expected. Visitors from other counties where tobacco was grown had met in the town, and men from the farms lying close about had been conferring with these. Conway’s report of the busy day followed her through the house after his departure. Young women had given their time to the growers’ project, typing in the offices, writing letters, carrying the visiting farmers from place to place in their cars. She had kept at home all day and the trills had mounted; she had not known of the business in the town. “The pool is something, but I am something else,” she thought. She made ready for the call her grandfather had asked her to make for him.

When she returned from this errand Albert was at hand; he had been let in by Horace and was sitting relaxed in his chair, recounting his day.

“I’m dead tired,” he said, when they were alone. He began to tell of his journey through three counties. His eyes were weary and listless, heavily troubled, and his voice was monotonous. Under his apathetic gaze he seemed to be looking at her lazily or sadly, as if he were sad for the weariness that now oppressed him.

“Back to Corinth, Monday that was, and then on to Mayfair.... Broke an axle and got stuck in a mud hole.... On to Johntown.... Over to Richelieu.... Back to Johntown.... By that time it was last night.” He seemed to be looking at her with some extra vision that shone from under the gaze of his shifting eyes.

“Already been all up in around Payne Lick and over beyond the Ridge. Over into the far side of the river. Had no sleep for a week till last night. Slept last night like a log.”

Theodosia sat on the chair of the blue cushions and the parlor was arranged as Conway had left it, as he had settled it to the afternoon light. Albert seemed suffused in sadness now, and the tale of his wanderings in behalf of the farmers would scarcely hold together longer. The end of the week had come and the end of his odyssey. The day in the town with eminent speakers from outside followed, touched sparingly. He had arrived soon after noon. He had worked all afternoon in one of the offices, seeing men. There was a greater plan for coöperative selling on foot, a tight pool. Finally he said:

“You know Florence Agnew?”

“Oh, yes, I know her.”

“Do you like her?”

“How do I know?... I don’t have to like her, do I?”

“What you think about her looks?”

“Oh, she’s a beauty, I guess. Yes, I’m sure of it. She’s a real beauty.”

“How many times you seen Florence?” he asked.

“All week. I’ve been to the reservoir when she was there and all over town. At a party one day. Eight or ten times, a dozen maybe, I’ve seen Florence, I reckon.”

“I’ve seen her only once.”

“Today?”

“All the rest of the day after I came. She was in Kirk’s office to write for the pool men, she and Ruth and one or two more.”

She had reached for the fiddle and was touching the strings without a sound. He said that he was tired as a dog and that he would go home and go to bed. He looked at her covertly, oppressed with weariness or some other burden. “I ought to ’a’ gone straight home, but I just thought I’d drop by.” His old smile, touched with some bitterness or sadness, went over his face for a moment and he took his hat from the table.

“So long,” he said. “I’m off.”

* * * * *

Albert and Florence were coming in at the doorway. It was the day after his return. He was richly alive, his life leaping within him, and Florence’s deep low voice was cutting to the end of the parlor, to the end of the hallway, as Theodosia came down the staircase to meet them.

They were sitting on the black haircloth divan toward the piano, and Theodosia sat on the blue chair opposite, giving them her searching interest, questioning, lending her low laugh to their hearty laughter. Florence Agnew’s lips had the ripples of water. “The flesh beside her mouth is a pearl with life in it,” Theodosia was thinking, and the event was gathering swiftly. Florence rested continually upon her beauty, luxuriating upon it, and her quick eyes went frequently to Albert’s eyes where they continued some former contact and some growing knowledge. They were telling of the day before, of the afternoon spent among the growers, and they had many incidents to recall, droll sayings, laughter, droll prejudices, caricatures of close-handed men. When their eyes met, Theodosia knew that she was forgotten. Once she arose quickly, murmuring some apology, and left the room. She walked the length of the cabinets of the Indian flints and looked through the glass, seeing nothing beyond. She stared at a stone hatchet, seeing no meaning beyond the outline. When she went back to the parlor they were sitting apart, Albert on the chair by the window, and she knew from some look of ease that enveloped them that they had had their caress. After that the talk lay quietly among the matters of the town, gossip of this one or that, but it flowed back to the farmers again and settled among the percentages and statistics.

“Is the pool assured?” Theodosia asked, and Albert seemed lost for the moment in some remote shock, seemed dazed as she came back thus into her former relation to the pool, to her interest in it. Her final report of it came through Florence Agnew.

“Oh, yes, it is,” Florence said. “Isn’t it, Albert?”

“Oh, yes, a sure thing now. All set.”

Their eyes were building between them again and their laughter was renewed. They went away laughing over the stories they had told, retelling themselves. Theodosia let them pass beyond the door of the room and then she began to push the chairs into place and to arrange the shutters. She took her instrument from its case and tested a string, but her ear was dead to tone as her limbs were dead to feeling. Then Albert ran back through the doorway and stood beside her.

“You see how it is with me, Theodosia?”

“Yes.”

“I brought her here so’s you’d see. For yourself.”

“I see.”

“She’s out at the gate to wait for me.”

There was a quiet space while she drew at the string, her ear deaf to the tone, but her fingers tinkering knowingly.

“Good-bye,” he said.

She had no reply for this. Her words were caught in her stiff throat, whatever they might have been. He began to walk toward the door, going slowly, on tiptoe, whispering something. He went toward the door aimlessly, moving uncertainly, bent forward under some burden or pain. Then he said, whispering from the doorway:

“Good-bye.

“Good-bye, Theodosia,” still whispering.

“Why, good-bye,” she said aloud, smiling toward him. “Good-bye, Albert. Good-bye.”

* * * * *

Her hands were dull and wooden over the trills and she laid the instrument aside. Fear and pain mounted in her mind and she wandered over the house or sat stiffly in a chair. Fear that had been allayed arose and multiplied, meeting other curious hurts and shames, meeting pride in a vortex of confusion. Toward nightfall she went from the house quickly and walked through Crabtree Lane, away from the chief avenue of the town. She turned into Hill Street and passed among the small cabins that were lined along the unpaved roadway. The people of the street were leaning over their fences or sitting in their doorways. They looked at her searchingly as she went by, their slightly averted eyes asking what had brought her there. When she had passed ten or twelve cabins she saw Americy sitting on a doorstep. There was a low gate before the door of the house, and Theodosia came near to this and laid her hands upon it before she was discovered. Americy was touching the strings of a guitar uncertainly and making a chord or two, and as she strummed she was singing softly. She looked up when the hands were shaken on the gate and stopped her strumming, and when she saw Theodosia she cast her eyes upward in surprised questioning and embarrassment.

“You need one chord more,” Theodosia said. “Let me show you. One chord, like this.” She had gone within the gate and was sitting on the step beside Americy now. “One chord more is all. To make the song go.”

“You needn’t to bother. I don’t play nohow. I was just a-picken a little bit. I can’t play.”

“It’s like this,” Theodosia said. She sat on the step beside Americy and took the guitar out of her hands. “You put in this one, and then the first again, and see, it all rounds out and makes the song go better.” The guitar felt greasy in her hands and it smelt of the brown girl’s fingers. Americy was reticent, not eager to try the chord, afraid or hostile, but Theodosia urged her to take the instrument again. When the new chord was needed she placed the fingers on the strings, and Americy yielded although her mind groped in a gloom and did not learn the new way easily. Her brows were smooth and sharply cut but her mouth was heavy and her chin dull and clumsy. The dark splotches on her face were much less prominent than Theodosia had remembered.

“Who taught you to play?” Theodosia asked.

“A boy I know taught me, but I don’t play none nohow. I can’t play.”

“Where’s Lethe?”

“I don’t know. Somewheres down town.”

“Does Lethe live here with you?”

“What you want here? What you come here for?”

“I heard you play and I just stopped by.”

Americy fumbled with the new chord and found it. The other people of the street had turned into their doors and the dark had suddenly come close. Theodosia was searching for some pretext for returning and her mind reverted to its loathing and gloated on its disgust. She wanted to see Americy minutely, to search her to the roots of her life and her being, and she dwelt on the chord hoping that it would yield a way. She lingered over the latching of the gate, making efforts to approach the other, turning her hands about on the deeply weathered pickets of the fence. She thought that she might make some exchange with Americy on the basis of the music and thus gain some commerce with her. She spoke easily when the idea shaped itself into an offer, a direct appeal.

“I need somebody to do some work for me, a little laundry work, crêpe-de-chine things, nightgowns, petticoats, slips. I’ll teach you the chords in trade, if you’ll do it.” She bargained, encouraged by Americy’s interest and willingness. “I’ll show you some chords you can use to play a dozen songs, easy chords too.” Americy was acquiescent. They arranged that Theodosia would bring the garments and come for them when they were ready.

At home again Theodosia selected the clothing at once, some delicately embroidered undergarments of silk, presents from Ruth and Jane. Beyond her interest in the clothing she could not have a mind for any other matter, and she sat beyond the curtains of an upper window looking down on the street unseen, her eyes unseeing, nor would she answer any voice that called up the steps to her. She carried the garments to Hill Street the day after her first visit there. The small house was heavy with steam and the odors of human sweat, of drying clothing. She was fearful of Lethe, but she had gone in the early morning with the hope of seeing her. Americy was cordial in her greeting. She leaned over the clothing admiringly or she appraised the pieces to make an estimate of the time they would require.

“If five’s too many,” Theodosia said, “I’ll leave only four, or maybe three. How about four?”

“I’d as lief do five as not. Leave all, you can. I don’t mind.”

Lethe had come out of the kitchen and stood behind them. When Theodosia turned about she was standing near looking over their arms at the garments tossed upon the table. She was a matured woman, heavy-breasted but light on her feet. Theodosia saw that she had not remembered her face accurately, that she had remembered it too much in its attitude of unpassionate refusal. Lethe was larger than Americy, more settled and determined by life. Her hands were long, making long lines where they lay, the one on her breast and the other at her hip, strong hands, but little marked by their labor. Her face was long and was pointed slightly at the chin, a heavy face, moving from moment to moment, changing from curiosity, suspicion, hate, admiration, undefined emotions blended and divided. She was darker than Americy. Her hair was combed back and parted, but a few black kinky spirals of it resisted the parting and lay on her forehead. She looked from Theodosia to the clothing on the table, back and forth, and said in a low voice that came from one corner of her lips:

“What is it she wants, Americy?”

“She wants these-here pieces washed.”

“Charge her a plenty,” she said.

“I’ll pay money,” Theodosia said, and she was ashamed then that she had proposed any other bargain. She turned to Americy and said, “What’s it worth, those pieces?”

“Miss Theodosia said she’d teach me how to play,” Americy said.

“What does she want here?” Lethe said.

“Have you time enough to play the chords now, Americy?” Theodosia asked quickly. “Get the guitar. Where is it?”

Americy had remembered the chords from the last teaching although she was shy to sing the song through before Lethe’s hostile presence. She hummed the tune, sitting on the edge of the bed. Theodosia glanced down then and saw the small frayed foot-mat under Americy’s feet and saw that the room was cluttered with poor, ill-used things, a chair rudely mended, another chair that had lost its under-structure and was propped upon a small box. The walls had been roughly plastered and were hung with ugly and useless bric-à-brac, cast-away ornaments from the homes of the whites. A red plush couch behind the door was neatly laid with ironed clothing.

“Lethe sang it along with me last night,” Americy said. “It goes a sight better if two sing. Lethe can sing a right smart better’n I can nohow. Lethe can sing.”

“Come on, Lethe, and sing,” Theodosia said. “Americy says you can sing. Come on.”

“I can’t no such thing,” Lethe said, but her manner was more warm. She moved away toward the small fireplace, her hands now folded under her bosom, her mind set upon some pleasant inner sense of herself, her steps slow and aimless. “I can’t sing so fine as Americy makes out.”