Strange Yesterday (22 page)

Then he turned and stared in the direction of her pointing. Far off, so far that it appeared as an illusion, there was a strip of blue that faded, with a wonderful gentleness, into the horizon, leaving scarcely any line of demarcation. Now he thought that he saw it, and again that he did not.

“It is the sea,” she said simply.

Why, thought he, should there be reverence in her voice? And why should she stand so taut and eager gazing at the sea as though it were the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? What was there about the sea? In between, the land rose and fell like an ocean with no wind; the land was green; there were houses, and groups of houses that were towns, and larger groups that might have been cities; there were trees, in clumps, in forest, and alone. And there, far off, was a strip of blue—the sea.

It was calling!

“Yes,” he said to her, still looking away, “it is calling.”

And she nodded quickly.

Above, the leaves of the oak rustled; the grass rustled; and the branches strained and groaned like the timbers of a ship under the pull of wind and canvas. Throwing back her head, she flung her eyes to the sky, parting her lips, drawing at the hair that flowed from her. She seemed to have lost him, to have forgotten him entirely. After that, they did not speak; they went down the hill.

When they reached the pasture, the sun was cutting away to the west, piling clouds at the other end of the sky with its light. Shadows were lengthening. The merest trace of a spring chill came into the air.

Now she smiled, giving him her hand. “Good-by,” she said, knowing that it could not be good-by—ever.

“Good-by, Inez.”

Then she was gone, and he was alone, in the dying sun.

3

As she crossed the fields, John Preswick watched her until she had gone through the garden and into the house. Then he went over to the stone wall, drew himself up on it, and buried his chin in his palms. All of the day had been wonderful from the moment he came upon this place, but most wonderful—most natural, too—of all was that he should be John Preswick, and she Inez. Every so often, as long as he could remember, he would recall something that rightly had no place in his life, and recalling it, he would puzzle upon it, as now.

In the small fact that he was John Preswick, he took certain satisfaction, in the name itself, in the twang of it….

He thought of the girl. Rightly, the girl belonged with the day, for she was in every manner as incomprehensible as the rest. He stared at the little house.

Then he made up his mind—as though it were not made up all along! He made up his mind—so he thought—and he slid from the fence; and doing so, it occurred to him, and only now, that the girl was a part of the house, and that the house was as far from him as the stars were.

But he brushed back his hair, slid from the fence, and sauntered off—in the direction of the house. Because he desired time in which to think, he walked slowly, examining everything he passed. Coming near to the house, he caught the scent of flowers from the garden; it was an increasing perfume upon the wind, and he drank great breaths of it. The hedge being higher than his head, he could not see into the garden, and he wondered what manner of flowers they were. As he had surmised, the house was small, having but two stories beneath its peaked attic-floor. But in front of it, between the short forward wings, was a daintily columned portico, a small platform railed above it, all painted a dull cream. The house itself was of red brick, covered over with vines that finished in clawing about the four chimneys. There was something obscure about the house, perhaps its very quietness; it seemed as old as the Steer's Head, and it gave off its age, filling the air about with it, so that one who passed there could not help but know how good it is to forget and rest.

Green shutters were folded back from the windows, and crisp white curtains hung behind the glass. Perhaps she might even now be at one of the windows watching him.

Crossing around, he came to the rear of the house. Here, in narrow banks, flowers were laid out. Some distance away there was a vegetable garden. Close by was a woodshed, and an outhouse, which, from the odor, he judged to be a smoking-frame. The back door was ajar, but he waited outside of it and knocked. Two steps led up to it, and he stood with a foot upon each. When there was no response, he knocked again. This time he heard steps.

A tall, yellow mulatto, clad in an apron and a pair of over-large clogs, opened the door and stepped out. Craning her head, she fastened upon him a pair of reddish eyes that looked down along a thin, lengthy nose. Her face recalled a proboscis monkey he had once seen in a zoo.

“And what do you want?” she demanded, examining him frostily from his feet to his head.

“Please, ma'am—if I could see the lady of the house?”

“She ain't got no time for tramps! If you want a slab of corn pone, just wait here and I'll go and fetch it!” She had a snappish way of speaking, an air that fitted well with the house; she was cool as a winter night.

“But, ma'am, I don't want any corn pone, and I'm not a tramp—exactly. If I could speak to the lady of the house for only a moment—And I wouldn't be bothering her. Would you please go and call her, ma'am?”

His face broke into the smile that had been all the time lingering about his lips, a smile so contagious that it was unwittingly reflected upon the countenance of the negress.

“Well—” she hesitated; and he knew that he had won.

“Please, ma'am,” he put in quickly, “and I'll be mighty grateful to you.” He smiled and nodded at her, and she was defeated.

Her steps faded into the house, and, with growing impatience, he waited, fearful now that the thing had been put to test. The sun was lower, and it was almost twilight. A definite chill was in the air; for some reason, not entirely the cold, he shivered.

Different steps returned, and, instinctively, he knew it was not the mulatto. When again the door opened, an old woman stood there peering sharply at him through a pair of spectacles perched uncertainly upon her nose. Her face was tight, and a slur to intimacy; but in it there was some of the girl.

“Well?” she asked him, her voice low and not as shrill as he would have expected.

“Begging your pardon, ma'am, I'm looking for work—any work, and I thought—maybe here—”

She stared at him, and, as the servant before her had, studied him, examining him from his shoes to his hair. “Come here,” she said. “Come in here where I can see you.” She opened the door, stepping back, and he followed her into a pantry. Then she turned, looking at him again, her small eyes cutting through her glasses.

“You are strong,” she said, “and you are healthy enough. If you wish work, surely you could have found it. Why, then, come here?”

“Because—” jamming his hands into his pockets, he shuffled his feet—“because—Why, I don't know whether you'd understand me if I told you, ma'am.” And seeing her eyes, he hastily began to add: “I mean—”

“How old are you?” she thrust in.

“Seventeen.”

“Tramp, I suppose?”

“Yes, ma'am. I was—until now.” Almost did his mouth break into the smile that had been waiting there.

“From where?”

“Most everywhere.” No longer could he resist the temptation to smile.

“What is your name?”

“John Preswick.”

“I thought so. You are rather a glib young man, are you not? Come closer into the light. Look up. Now look at me. Don't posture. Be natural. I see—And yet, if your hair were lighter—But that is rank nonsense!”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“No insolence, young man. If you are to be here, know your place. What can you do?”

“Most everything.”

“Can you trim a hedge? Can you chop wood? Can you weed?”

“I guess I can.”

“Answer me yes or no!”

“Well, yes.”

“Will twenty dollars a month be enough?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Very well. Mary will give you your supper. Mary is the girl who answered the door. My name is Mrs. Vetchen. You will sleep in that house over beyond the trees, with Frank, who is the gardener. You will take your orders from him and from Mary. Now understand this. I will bear with no loafing. Young man, let me explain why I took you, for sooner or later I shall learn whether what you told me is the truth or a miserable jest. I am no longer a girl—neither am I a romanticist. The reason is your name—and perhaps your face. Sometime, perhaps, I shall tell you the story of another John Preswick. That is all.”

She was gone, and there was the mulatto. “If you want to eat—I'm not one to be keeping food through a night.”

“Yes, I do.”

She led him into a high kitchen. From the pantry they went down through a low, narrow passage that twisted at right-angles. The windows of the kitchen, as high as a man's head, were upon a level with the outside ground. There was a magnificent, indented hearth.

4

T
HE
very next morning he saw the girl again. He was alone in the kitchen peeling potatoes when she came in and went to the sink for a glass of water, scarcely pausing to glance in his direction. After she had finished drinking she turned and regarded him. If she was surprised, she did not show it. “So you are working,” she remarked.

“Since last night,” he agreed.

“I thought you were the boy Granny hired. I rather thought you would ask her. I rather suspected she would hire you.”

“Do you mind?”

“Why should I?” And after that she left as abruptly as she had entered.

Forgetting his potatoes, he gazed after her until the mulatto Mary returned from the pantry to scold him and order him to mind his work or lose his place. Then he went on with his peeling, automatically, his mind so far from potatoes that they existed not at all.

Finishing, he washed them, put them on the table, and went out into the back. In the small time he had been there, he realized that there would be little work for him to do. Now he was quite alone. Such a day it was as it had been when he came: blue and clear. A line of snowy wash flung itself to the breeze. The flowers nodded, as flowers are meant to nod, and a soft shower of blossoms stirred itself from the trees.

If the girl were only there, he would have asked her what manner of trees they were, broad with fat pear-shaped leaves, nodding like dandelions after the yellow has turned to white fur. Holding out his hand, he stood before one of the trees, clasping the blossoms as they fell, crunching them, and feeling the juice in his palm and the scent in his nostrils. Opening his hand, he looked at it and saw the wrinkled flowers, and saw the water mixed with powder; somehow, it was exultation, and he was happy.

Across the vegetable garden he walked, being careful not to tread upon any of the beds; beyond the garden was an orchard, also in full bloom, and beyond the orchard the forest encroached. From where he was now, he could see the Steer's Head and the tall oak that crowned its summit. Walking in a circle, over a low rise, he approached the stone wall that bound the pasture to the hedge, the pasture of the haystacks and the bull. At the wall he paused, then drew himself up and sat there, his chin upon his closed fists. As long as he dared, he sat there, hoping that the girl would come; but she did not; and, at last, he slid off, thrust his hands into the pockets of his overalls, and returned to the kitchen.

But he saw her the day afterwards, and spoke to her, and found out what sort of trees they were, and how long they might be expected to spill their blossoms and carpet the grass—as though all of that mattered!

And he saw her the day after that, and every day, as weeks passed, and weeks slid into months. And so accustomed did he become to the place, to everything about it, to the quietness, to the restfulness, that he observed no change…. Time passed; years formed themselves. He became eighteen, nineteen, she eighteen; his shoulders broadened; flesh crept onto his arms and trunk; she became a woman. He forgot too. There was no longer a California or a Lucille Croyden.

She was Inez—in actuality lord of all; there was her grandmother, and there was Mary, the mulatto cook, and there was Frank, the old gardener, so old that he could not be differentiated from the house, who lived for his plants, his flowers, his cool green things, and there was the negro butler, Jack, and there was Irene and Lottie, the two maids.… In so short a time he came to know them all. They lived their life, but it was such a life as he had never seen in any other place. They lived alone—as alone as though they were upon a desert isle; and except for those infrequent intervals when visitors came from the north, visitors in long, high-powered motor cars, no strangers entered the house. At first he could not understand it, and then, without understanding, he realized. It was the house.

Perhaps it was not so much the house as the garden and the great hedge. But the house was a goodly part of it. He had sensed it in the beginning when he threw a leg over the stone wall and looked into the pasture; but he had not known the spell at that time. It came after he had been there three days, and then it came so surely that he neither attempted nor desired to throw it off. It was made up of the scent of the flowers, of the warm earth odor, of the whispering of the wind, of the heavy humming of insects; and it seemed that the thick green vines that curled up about the house captured it and held it with all that it claimed. And the little road aided, for of late the road was not used by any but their private traffic, and the brown dust lay heavy.

Once he was there, he did not want to leave; and he knew the minds of the others. He slept in a room with Frank, who was brown and old as the earth itself, and he learnt much from Frank, who loved the earth and the things it gave. He came to know the flowers; he came to know the different vines; he came to know what the earth does. And he came to know the farmer and the gardener—that, whereas one may love it as a man another, the other loves the earth as a child.