Hers the Kingdom (5 page)

She sat next to him on the narrow and, she now realized, exceedingly hard seat of the wagon as they rolled along the road to the Four Corners, jostling over bumps, now and again being thrown together as the rough wagon lurched.

     "I should have asked the boys to hitch the surrey," she remarked idly. (She had, in fact, been searching for something to say to break the silence.)

     He looked at her, politely puzzled.

     "I mean," she explained, "the surrey would have been more comfortable . . ."

     "Do you think I'm not comfortable?" he asked, in a way that made her know he was not talking about the wagon. She could feel a swelling in her breast, the fabric of her dress felt suddenly tight across her chest. She straightened her back, and looked at her hands. She wished she had not. They were chafed and red from going without gloves, a farm girl's rough hands. She thought about Wellesley and how they had made fun of her hands, and how she had refused to capitulate. Then, her rough hands had been a sign of resistance, now she could only regret them. All the more for watching Owen's hands on the reins—long and slender, big hands, graceful and hairless. She thought: his chest will be hairless, too, and the thought made her flush.

     "I am comfortable with you, Willa," he went on. "That is what is so amazing."

     "Amazing?" she repeated, "why that?"

     He smiled. She felt a peculiar stirring in her stomach. She had not thought he would speak so quickly.

     "Expectations often fall short of reality," he pushed on, "as perhaps you have already discovered?"

     She chose to ignore his question, but asked instead: "Whatever did you expect of Porter Farm?" (Not, what did you expect of
me?
)

     "I'm not sure," he answered easily, moving back a pace. "Perhaps not to be so comfortable."

     She felt herself flush and she knew it was with pleasure. He was not disappointed in her, then, or he would not be telling her this.

     At the churchyard he climbed down and reached to help her. For a moment they stood together, her hand in his. Finally she said, "The church will be empty; it's used so seldom these days . . . occasionally the pastor will come out from Springfield to hold a service . . ." Still he held on to her hand. She looked into his eyes, which were brown and liquid, shining, eyes deep enough, she thought, to drown in. He was smiling then, and she back, and for a moment she thought she could not breathe deeply enough to get the air she needed.

     She walked ahead of him into the church her grandfather had built. Light was streaming through the high window to the north, sending shafts into the musty gloom. She shivered. The church had always made her feel solemn and cold. "Are you chilled?" he asked.

     "No," she whispered, "it's not that."

     "What, then?" His voice was low, intimate.

     The moment was shattered by a sharp crash sounding close by. Startled, Willa lurched into Owen. He steadied her.

     "A bird," he explained, "I think a bird flew into the windowpane. Against the light, it couldn't see the glass."

     She strode outside, shaking. Owen was right. On the ground beneath a window was a small brown bundle of feathers. "A lark bunting," she said, bending to pick it up, "a female . . . probably her nest is nearby, in the grass." She could feel warmth, still, in the small broken body. When she looked up at Owen there was anger and pain in her eyes.

     "One of God's own creatures," she murmured, "destroyed by the illusion of the glass." She lay the bird down, then turned and walked purposefully to the back of the church, to the well, where she began to dislodge the pail from its peg. The pail had not been used for a while, and it took her some time to disentangle the knot.

     "Lark buntings are beautiful little birds," she said, speaking quickly. "The female is drab and brown but the male is in sharp contrast, in black and white. If we looked, I suspect we might find their nest in the tall grasses around the churchyard." They were silent for the few minutes it took to get the bucket free. He did not try to help her, but watched as she manipulated the old wooden pail on its rope and pulley.

     As she leaned to drop it over the side, he said, "Don't fall in, you'll go all the way to China."

     She pulled in her breath in a small gasp, then laughed.

     "I know," she said. "When I was small I was sure that if I fell in that black hole they'd never find me."

     "And did you throw in pebbles, and hold your breath until you could hear them hit the water?"

     "An eternity!" she said. "One of the most delicious fears of my childhood, I do believe, was imagining what it would be like to fall down the well . . ."

     "Delicious?" he laughed at her, "well, I'm not so . . ."

     "Yes," she insisted, hauling on the ropes to pull the pail up. "Delicious. It was . . ."

     He was pulling now with her, the weight of the water having become increasingly heavy as it neared the top. She could feel his shoulder against hers, the muscles pressing. She was not sure she could speak, but she knew she must.

     "When the lark bunting, the male, puts on his seasonal show for the female—" (
Oh my
, she thought to herself,
what am I floundering into?)
"He climbs high, as high as you can imagine, and then with his wings quivering, he comes swooping down, singing all the way—a beautiful song. The flight is spectacular, truly." The
water pail appeared, he pulled it easily to the ledge of the well as she searched for the dipper. Finding it, she began to skim off the leaves and bugs that topped the water.

     "The sad thing about the lark buntings," she continued in a voice that was, to her amazement, altogether calm, "is that our farms have taken away so much of the grasslands they nest in that they've had to move south and west."

     "Like the rest of us," Owen said. Then, leaning down into the well, he shouted, "Go west, lark bunting," and the words echoed deep in the well, sounding against the damp and mossy sides like some sepulchral voice from the depths of the earth.

     Willa laughed her wonderful, spilling-over laugh then, and it washed over them, making Owen grin with pleasure. He dipped the water out of the bucket and let it fall in the space between them, so that she could rinse her hands.

     "I like to make you laugh," he said to her.

     "You shouldn't say that," she mocked him. "My teachers at Wellesley told me a lady would never laugh that way—they said it was vulgar."

     "And that," he said, taking her arm, "is what is wrong with Wellesley."

     She looked at him seriously, then. "For a moment I thought I might seem falsely dramatic—about the death of the little bunting." Willa said, "and in fact, perhaps I was. I know I would have felt no such distress had a hawk taken the bunting."

     She started to spread the lunch on a grassy place in the churchyard, under the old elm. A spring breeze stirred the leaves and for a time it was the only sound. Carefully, she placed a loaf of bread on the cutting board, the knife alongside it. She unwrapped the cheese and some sausages. He reached for the knife and began slicing the loaf, giving it what seemed his full concentration.

     "So," he said, finally, "we share a fear of deep wells, and a concern for lark buntings. Surely that is a good start."

     She did not look up at him, but continued arranging the
luncheon foods. Carefully, she removed some dried apples from their bag and put them on a plate.

     "Tell me more," he said, and she quickly retorted, "No, you tell me, now."

     "My life story?" he asked.

     "Of course," she answered lightly, "all of it."

     To her surprise—she had thought it to be no more than banter—he became serious.

     "I was not reared for any sort of working life," he began, and the way he spoke—a trifle pedantic—made her think that his speech was rehearsed. He went on, "My father did well in business, as perhaps you know. I was ill as a child and my parents—having lost four others—were understandably cautious about my health. I was left to my tutors and my daydreams."

     He shook his head, being careful not to frown. "One day for a reason I can no longer remember—we were at a farmhouse in New Hampshire. It was summer, and warm, and my tutor took me to read under a tree that was on the edge of a field. Men were working—harvesting, I think. I can still feel what I felt then, as I watched those men lifting and raking, the muscle ropes in their arms. I wanted to do what they were doing with all my heart. I envied those men more than I have ever envied anyone—before or since . . . the muscles, the sweat, the throat dry with dust from the fields. I even fancied I could feel the pleasure of physical exhaustion, when lying down at night. In that moment, I knew that I would not be confined to an office or a study, that if I couldn't work in the fields, I could at least find a way to be a part of the world, the movement, the active life rather than the passive."

     It was a long speech, and for most of it he had not been looking at her. Now he turned, as if coming back. "I surprised even myself, I think," he went on, "and I surprise myself now, talking on so as if I were the only subject in the world."

     She busied herself with the cutting of a plum cake, handing him a large slice on a napkin.

     "Tell me, now, how you happened to become so interested in hawks," he said. "It is your turn to confide."

     "First you tell me," she countered, purposefully, "what you would have done had you been disappointed in . . . Porter Farm?"

     He looked at her, chastened.

     "You remember," she went on, boldly, "you said that you felt comfortable here, and that it surprised you. What would you have done had you not felt comfortable?"

     "I don't know," he answered with surprising candor, "but it can't matter, can it? The fact is, I do feel comfortable with you. I am not disappointed, and I hope you are not, either."

     
With you
, he had said. No pretenses, no subterfuge. He was not disappointed in her and he felt confident enough of his own appeal to assume she was not disappointed in him. The lightness, the excitement Willa had felt when his shoulder pressed against hers was displaced by the weight of reality. Willa guessed that she was one of Owen Reade's calculated risks; she guessed, too, that his courting flight would be brief.

     "You asked about hawks, how I came to find them so interesting," she said, in answer. "Just as you remember the afternoon in New Hampshire, I remember the first time I sat and watched the flight of a hawk—truly watched, I mean. Pa had sent me out to find a cow and her calf that had become separated from the herd, and I had to go a long ways. On the way back I sat down to rest for a minute. I leaned against a fencepost—it was late in the evening, after milking—and looked up, and there against the sky was one of the biggest birds I had ever seen. At first I thought it to be a golden eagle. It was quartering—separating a field into sections, then moving methodically in large swooping circles until the whole of the field is covered—and now and then it would just hover, beating its wings in such a way as to stay in one place. I watched it for the longest time, and when I went home I searched through all of Grandmother's books until I found what it was—a rough-legged hawk. After that, for days, I could close my eyes and see that hawk soaring and swooping. I couldn't seem to get
it out of my mind, so I read everything I could find about hawks and I began to notice them in the fields, and they seemed, just, to say by their flight what I so often felt . . . I cannot put it into words, but sometimes I can feel what it would be like to soar . . ."

     She shuddered involuntarily, but when he moved to touch her she backed away. She was deeply humiliated, chastened, by what she had revealed, all the more so because she could not know why she had accepted the acceleration of the courtship. Was she afraid that if she made him wait, if she asked that he go at her pace, he would be lost to her?

"It is time enough for a first meeting," Mama said when Willa told her that Owen would be leaving at the end of the week. "Perhaps he will be able to visit again on his return trip," she went on, probing, trying to discover something of Owen's plans, wanting to know what Willa knew. But Willa was not in a mood to cooperate, and said nothing. Mama controlled her temper, ending weakly with, "You can correspond, you know. Letters are a fine way to become better acquainted."

     Willa changed the subject abruptly, which caused me to look up from the peas I was shelling. "I think Owen would enjoy a special gala performance of the Family Puppet Show," she said. Mama's mood changed quickly. She loved the puppet shows. The year of Grandmother's death, when Willa had come home from Wellesley College to stay, she brought with her several small puppets and taught the boys how to work them. That Christmas, Pa and Gib, with Mama's help, had made a puppet that was a remarkable caricature of Willa. After that, nothing would do but that each of us have our own puppet. Willa wrote the first of the Family Puppet Shows, followed by increasingly elaborate productions devised by the boys, who seemed able to speak freely through their puppet counterparts.