HIS mother’s curiosity about the lassie disappeared at the first glimpse she got of his face. She put him to bed, with hot drinks and heated stones, with quilt after quilt wrapped about him. But still he chilled and shivered. He was so wretched that she had no heart to reprove him for that rash outing through the rain. For a long time he remained fever-shaken and low-spirited, the last one certainly she would venture to ask about a girl. Day after day he lay contrasting in his mind those two hours with Chirstie, contrasting his dreams with the reality, while the rain continued to sweep across the prairies in gray and windy majesty. One day Andy returned dripping from the post office with the news of Lee’s surrender. Wully celebrated the event with an unusually hard chill. The tidings of Lincoln’s death sickened him desperately. He got to thinking he was never again to be a strong man. And he could see no reason for wanting to be.
After a few weeks the rains ceased, and the spring flooded her sunshine over the fields with high engendering ecstasy. The McLaughlins, man and boy, from dawn to darkness went over their ground, getting the prodigal soil into the best possible[49] tilth, scattering the chosen seed by hand. Even on the holy Sabbath of the Lord, Wully’s father walked contentedly through his possessions, dreaming of the coming harvest, and of the eventual great harvest of a nation. It was lambing time, and calving time, and time for little pigs and chickens. The very cocks went about crowing out their conquering energy all over the yard, till it seemed to Wully, sitting wearily on the doorstep, that he was the only thing in the world sick and useless and alone.
May passed, and June. Thoughtful men sighed when they spoke of the soldier, and hated war the more. Five years ago he had gone away a strong, high-spirited lad, and now he dragged himself brokenly around the dooryard, the wreck of a man. His mother, trying to tempt his appetite, was at her wits’ end. She sometimes thought if he had been a younger boy she would have given him a thoroughly good spanking. She didn’t know what to make of him. Had he not always been the happiest, most even-tempered of her flock? Had there not been times when he and Allen had made bets about which one would begin chilling first, when malaria, like everything else, had been a joke with them? She had never seen a child as unhappy, as irritable as her Wully was now. There was no way of pleasing him. All he wanted was to be left alone, to lie with his face in his arms on the bed, scarcely speaking civilly when she tried to get him to eat something. But whenever she said to herself[50] that he ought to be spanked, at once her heart reproved her. How could she imagine all that he had been through, all the strain of those years? The poor laddie, so wretched, and his own mother having no patience with him!
In all these weeks Wully had seen the girl only a few times, and none of them an occasion much less painful than the first. Once he had been well enough to go to church. He had waited till she came out of the door, and then, before them all, he had gone over to the wagon where she was seating herself with her brother. She had drawn away from him as if he had been a rattler, he said to himself bitterly. What did she suppose he had done, anyway, that she didn’t want even to look in his direction? He had gone again to her desperately one evening, determined to find out what it all meant. She had indeed been alone when he came within sight, but, seeing him, she had called sharply to Dod to come and sit beside her. As if she were afraid of him! As if he would hurt her! She was even more distant now than she had been when he was in New Orleans, when he could at least think of her with hope. Once he had driven over with his mother to see her, had ridden along in forbidding silence, wondering how much his mother knew of that first visit, dreading lest she might mention Chirstie’s name significantly to him. He had not condescended to go into the house that time, but finding Dod’s hoe, he had weeded their little patch of corn, weeded it fiercely and well, to[51] let her see how he would have worked for her if only she had been willing. His mother had not said a word about the girl as they rode home together, but she sighed deeply, from time to time, so that he guessed Chirstie had not even been cordial to her.
He tried hard enough, as he grew stronger, to shake off his depression. There were plenty of girls in the world whom he might marry, weren’t there? The trouble was, he hated other girls. Still, he couldn’t let merely one woman make him unhappy, could he? Not much! He used to be happy all the time, before he got to thinking about her so much. He would brace up, he vowed, and forget her. But Harvey Stowe came home in July, and came at once to see him, a strong and hilarious Harvey, who wouldn’t take any excuses. Wully must come over to his wedding. Wully would not. Likely he would go to another man’s wedding! He would have fever that day if he hadn’t had it for a week! But he went.
The day after, thinking of his friend’s happiness as he walked through his father’s wheat, he sat down to rest in a path which it shaded, and stretched himself out in it. There suddenly and poignantly, for the first time in his life, he envied Allen and wanted to die. He wanted to die with so keen a despair that never afterwards could he hear the cocksure rail against suicide. He hated living vehemently, and wanted to escape from it. There was no use saying one girl couldn’t make[52] him unhappy. He was meant for Chirstie, and without her life had no meaning. Some way, it had just that combination of demure eyes and white arms to stimulate his desire till it was without mercy. He could not go on without her. He wished there had been a battle that day, which he could have gone into. He would have shot himself dead with his first bullet. That was the climax of his despair, though he was far from knowing it.
The next Sunday he walked with his brothers to the church where the lairds of the Waupsipinnikon, ragged but clean, worshiped the God of their fathers. The little church they had built out of their wartime prosperity stands on a green knoll on Gib McWhee’s farm. Entering it, one saw then, as one sees nowadays, a large unadorned square room, with only one beauty, and that so great that any church in the world might well envy it. Eight high, narrow windows it has, pointedly arched, of clear glass, and whatever one thinks of a style of ecclesiastical architecture which draws one’s attention from the sermon to the prairies, those eight windows frame pictures of billowing, cloud-shadowed, green distances in which surely sensible eyes can never sufficiently luxuriate.
Up the scrubbed aisle, into pews varnished into yellow wave patterns, family after family filed decorously that morning, mothers and infants in arms and strong men—there were as yet no old men in that world. Wully went to the family pew. Before the war he had usually sought out a place[53] where the overflow of big boys sat as far as possible away from the source of blessings. The McLaughlin pew held only twelve, and that uncomfortably. But there had never been more than twelve children at church together, since small Sarah had been born after her brothers had gone to war.
The congregation sang their Psalms out of books now. No more lining-out of numbers in a congregation so well-established and prosperous. The man of God read the Scriptures, and then at last came that welcomed long prayer, good for fifteen minutes at least. Wully, sitting determinedly in a certain well-considered place in the pew, bowing his head devoutly and bending just a bit to one side, could watch Chirstie through his fingers, where she sat on the other side of the church in the pew just behind the McLaughlins. Her eyes were closed, but his did a week’s duty. There was no doubt about it. She was getting thinner and thinner. It wasn’t just his imagination. She was paler. She was unhappy. He had noticed that week by week. Surely she was not happy!
The minister was an indecent man, cutting that prayer short in so unceremonious a fashion. Wully wondered the elders didn’t notice his carelessness. But after the sermon there would be another prayer, just a glimpse long. He had that to look forward to. He made a mental note of the text, which the children would be expected to repeat at the dinner table, and then settled down, to be disturbed[54] no more by sermons. He had long ago acquired a certain immunity to them. A breeze cooled the warm worshiping faces, and from outside came the soothing hum of bees, and the impatient stamping of fly-bitten horses. The minister’s voice was rich and low. The younger children slept first, unashamedly, against the older ones next them, and then, gradually, one God-fearing farmer and another, exhausted by the week’s haying, nodded, struggled, surrendered, and slept.
Wully was wide awake, waiting for the last prayer. There was no time to be lost, when the petitions were so short. He turned his head, and there—oh, Chirstie was looking at him! With head bowed, but eyes wide open, she was looking at him! Hungrily, tenderly, pitifully, just as he wanted her to look! Their eyes met, and her face blossomed red. She turned her head hastily away. Let her turn away! Let her pray! He knew, now! That was enough! For some reason she didn’t mean him to understand. But he had found out! It was all right. He could wait. He could wait any length of time, if only she would look at him again in that way! The congregation had risen, and had begun the Psalm. He would tell her, then and there, how glad he was, how he understood! He lifted up his voice and sang, sang louder than anyone else. That was what Allen used to do, when the service particularly bored him. He would sing the last Psalm louder and clearer than[55] the whole congregation, with the face of an earnest, humble angel, while his elders admired, and his contemporaries hid their amusement as best they might. Chirstie would know Wully was sending her a joyous, patient answer. What did it matter that in going out she never once would turn towards him? Perhaps that was the way of women. They don’t just tell you all that is in their hearts. It was all very well. He knew what she was thinking.
After dinner, he said he was going down to the swimming hole, where the assembly of cousins proved week by week that the heat had prevailed over the shorter catechism. But instead he rushed eagerly and cautiously over to Chirstie. He knew there might be someone with her on Sunday, and he left his horse some distance away, intending, if he saw others there, to come back and wait. There was not a sound to be heard as he crept up, though he stopped, listening. He hesitated, and drew nearer. Then he saw her. She was sitting in the little plot of shade the cabin made, on the doorstep, and her head was bowed on her arms. On a bit of rag carpet on the ground, her little sister was sleeping. Chirstie didn’t hear him. He went cautiously nearer, not wanting to startle her. He stood still, scarcely knowing how to be the least unwelcome. What was this he saw? What was this? She was crying! He stood still, watching her carefully. She was shaken with sobbing.