White Narcissus (2 page)

The land became more rolling, hummocky, confused, with bare cultivated spots, thick brush along random, half-concealed fences. The road and the river seemed to rival each other in the vagrancy of their courses. The banks were now white clay, now green with weedy grass or up-grown shrubbery, a brief row of tall trees – over all of which the sun flowed coldly. A man was tiny enough in the midst of great cities, he remembered strangely, but here it was possible to wonder how many more of these roads there were stretching away into the evening, endlessly, bearing each its strung-out farms, its weight of enigmatic human and animal circumstance.

He seemed suddenly to have walked a great distance. A burden of his own past seemed to have descended upon him. How beautiful all this had been, and as the years of his boyhood slipped past without more than a dream of wider freedom, how dreary! The changing of the seasons had only emphasized the impression of monotony, and he had been held by inertia, and uncertain hope of fulfilment, on the only soil he knew. He had begun to write, and it was comparatively
late that he had obeyed that questing-spirit which is the heritage of youth. Well, he had gone into the world and done all that he had dreamed of doing, and he had returned frequently enough with the one purpose, to the one being which could call him back; and still the land was the same, with a sorrowful sameness. It seemed that the beauty of this country should have increased, become clear and undeniable even to its preoccupied inhabitants. It always seemed that these people should have found larger interest and a wider view during his own period of Wanderjahre and Lehrjahre.

But now he was coming to the Hymerson farm. Here he knew he would be safe, more or less at home. Old friends of his family in a large phrase, old neighbours at least, they would be glad to see him, if only from curiosity. There did not seem to be improvements in the place, he noted, nor neglect. Wire fencing extending part way along the road, then the old rankly growing hedge, until that was clipped low in front of the house. This was a great affair of cheap yellow brick, which had been a show-place in his boyhood. It already showed signs of decay. The roof, of wooden shingles, was brown, the wood of the gables stained brown with weather, and the originally white veranda posts and scrollings were flaked grey and lead-coloured. There were high weeds along the roadside, and the lawn itself was lush with grass, except for spots uprooted in irregular holes. The source of these holes became apparent in squeals from behind the house. The chorus, kept up so pertinaciously, foretold the supper hour of the pigs.

Entering in at the open lane, for there was no gate to the lawn, Richard Milne saw again the familiar buildings. The barn, an L-shaped huge structure of splotched grey beneath an old coat of pink paint, had been raised upon a foundation
of cement blocks, abutted by lengthy graded approaches, which occupied much of the space of the yard.

The yard was a broad expanse strewn with apparent indiscrimination: smaller buildings and used machinery. A long, slatted corn-crib with sway-back roof looked as though, empty, it could have been drawn away by a team of horses. But yellow ears of corn protruded between the slats at one end, a remainder after the winter’s feeding. A similarly disreputable granary stood at the other side. And all about sprawled cultivators, harrows, discs, a mower, a bare wagon, the rack of which leaned against the side of the corn-crib.

These machines were not rusted in any state of disuse. In fact, they and the buildings, instead of giving the place a general effect of neglect, imparted a business-like aspect, as of work being in progress which forbade such fol-de-rols as neatness, newness, paint, and shelter from the elements of air and earth, for which all things were, in any case, ultimately destined.

Before Richard Milne came to the house he saw crossing the yard in the rear a flapping, overalled, small figure of a man, carrying a pair of dripping swill-pails. He waved, going forward without setting down his club-bag. It was Carson Hymerson, who went on to the swill-barrels and dipped the pails, heaving them out with a swish of water whitened by the admixture of chopped grain, and vegetable refuse curling over the rims.

“Just time supper, have good trip out? Hogs here they know it’s time for supper, ’Spose you’re glad to get away to the country once ‘nawhile, how long you goin’ to stay?” Hymerson said all this apparently without breath, and with the automatic and evenly timed swiftness of a phonographic record turned at twice its normal speed. It was just his way, Richard
remembered people said, as he shook hands with him. The farmer was over fifty, but still his ruddy, hard face, tinged to brass colour by tan, was unchanged by wrinkles, knobby as ever as to chin, nose, cheek-bones, and saltily blue of eye. “Well, Missus’ll want to see you better go in supper, I’ll be there right now.”

Milne hesitated, still holding his bag, but the tone had been so arbitrary that, considering that the man might have some other immediate task before the meal, he turned back toward the house, walking over a series of long, warped boards under the edges of which grass grew. The surface of the yard was sparsely green in places, where vegetation had survived the trampling of mud in the spring.

The screen-door under the porch was open, a wood-burning range hummed cheerily, and there were steps from another room. “Shoo! Scat out of here!” A black cat sped before her, but Mrs. Hymerson, compared with her husband, was ceremonial in her reception. She wore a white shirtwaist with high collar, and a black pleated skirt.

“Why, how do you do; you’re quite a stranger, Richard. But I suppose I should call you Mr. Milne. I thought, you know, I heard Carson talking to somebody, but I couldn’t just be sure. You must stay for tea. How’s –” She seemed to recall that he lived apart from relatives, that he had no near ones. “How’s everything in the city? It must be hot there! Well! It’s nice to have you come back and see us.” She nodded.

Richard Milne, in the polite replies permitted him at intervals, was conscious of a subdued reservation, like excitement coming unreasonably into his mind. It was impatience, he discovered. He wanted to cloak it in random conversation, discussion of country doings, anything. He could have tried to arrange some provision for a long stay, but he knew
that Mrs. Hymerson would be offended if he immediately proposed a definite arrangement. And then his uncertainty recalled that he did not know himself how long or in what manner he would be staying.

H
e had washed the grime from hands and face in the kitchen, wiped on a prickly towel, and was sitting at the supper table where Mrs. Hymerson, who insisted that they should not wait, was pouring tea, before the farmer came in, breathing audibly. Calves from a neighbouring farm had broken through the line fence; he had seen them afar off browsing on his oats, and chased them.

“Well, we’ll go and call on him after supper, you and I,” he announced to Milne.

“Are they from the Lethen side?” asked the latter.

“Certainly they’re from Lethen’s. That old man’s past farming, if he ever was any good at it. Can’t even keep up his fences. Why he ever stays on – But then you must remember. Bet he’d seem as old when you were a kid as he does now.”

“I remember how impressive he appeared, with his young brown face and his white hair. I hadn’t seen anyone like him; and when I got to know him a little better he never quite became commonplace.”

“Quite a character.” Mrs. Hymerson smiled, as though she knew and wished to take the flavour from what her
husband was about to express. “And you know, he knows more than you’d think, too. They say he was well educated when he was young. …”

“Appear distinguished, I guess he does, appear,” burst in the rapid accents of Carson Hymerson. “That’s all he does, is appear, the old fraud, don’t I know him, know him like a book! I guess I ought to, hmph!” The man drew up his right shoulder and twisted his head aside in a grimace of cynic humour. “Why, when I and he was on the school-board, there never was any peace, but he’d be thinking up ideas. And you couldn’t do anything with him, once he got an idea in his head. Crazy, that’s what he is, crazy, and he don’t know it.” The last few swift words came in a lower tone, for he was not unaware of Richard Milne’s reception of them, a hardening of the mouth.

“I am sorry to hear that. Mr. Lethen must have changed. It seemed to me that he was the kind of man who, if he could make out to live in the country at all, would be of invaluable service.” The younger man spoke with a deliberation which spoke of long-weighed conclusions, and a disposition to regard only politeness in listening to whatever might be said on the subject. Carson Hymerson heard him with impatient snorts, scarcely able to keep from interrupting but, perhaps because of the still regard of his wife, less acrid in tone when he did rattle:

“You might think so. It’s quite a while since you had much to do with old Lethen, ain’t it? Well! You ask the neighbours when you want to find out about a man! You can ask….” He mumbled, then went on with greater heat. “Invaluable use, why that’s just what he ain’t, is useful.”

“Yes, of course, it must be kind of past his time for working very hard.” Mrs. Hymerson, Richard Milne’s amusement
noted, had preserved a sense for affable adjustment which her husband might never have possessed. The latter was not going to let her smooth things over.

“Why, look at the way he’s always lived with that woman of his. That’s enough for me, never speaking! And take his daughter….”

“Yes … ?” began Richard, so quickly that the woman at once struck in, high-pitched.

“All I say is … all I say is, we can’t ever
know
, don’t you see, what may be at the bottom of these things. Everyone has their cross to bear, and we can’t always understand, so it behooves us not to judge others.” Mrs. Hymerson’s voice became more even as she went on, despite the snort of Carson, as though she were reciting a well-remembered scriptural lesson. Milne, too grateful now that a moment of rage had passed not to abet her irrelevance, turned to her.

“Is Arvin not at home now, Mrs. Hymerson? I hope you’ll pardon my not inquiring before; I missed him at once, of course.”

“Arvin, he went out in the country to-day to look for a cow. Kind of running out of good cows, some going dry, going to fat a couple for beef. So I thought I’d give the boy a chance, let him use his own head this time and buy one without me near. I hope he don’t get beat,” he added grimly.

Richard Milne could not forbear a smile, which only belatedly he reflected might be taken as derogatory to the young man, twenty-six at the time of his last visit, but schooled – better, dragooned – by his father’s impatience daily.

“That’s fine.” The remark hearty and sincere. “I don’t think they’ll get ahead of Arvin in a deal.”

“And how is your – work progressing?” asked Mrs. Hymerson, beaming. “I’ve heard a lot about your books.
They happen around here. Two of them, you’ve written, haven’t you?”

Three had been published, Richard told her. “Things are going well enough that I’m taking a holiday.” He chuckled. “Keeping in the office, where most of my work with the advertising agency is done, gets pretty tiresome, especially at this season of the year.”

“Get you fellows out in the hayfield,” was Hymerson’s jocular amenity. “Find out it was hot enough there, too.”

The young man did not reply to this, reflecting almost with dismay that he had forgotten the terms of intercourse in the country, by which it was necessary that he should be able to “give as good as was sent.” Doing that, in fact, was one of the chief roads to respect – one certainly blocked to him, even if the restraint caused him to appear morose.

“Our work,” he proceeded, “is interesting; so we are told by people who don’t know it. And certainly it has a fascination. It’s fun to know that you are writing for a million readers, from the start.” This was a rough effort at approximation to which he felt that a response could be sought. Nothing tried him more than talking of his good work, his creative books, to curious or indifferent people, and he valued the topic of advertising in proportion to the lack of immediacy it had for him. From the time of his rural upbringing he retained a sense that no one but other craftsmen really could be concerned in such matters.

He listened idly to the exclamations of his hostess and the dubious questions of Carson Hymerson really in swelling restiveness. He fancied that the shadow of the cross-piece of the screen-door crept across the kitchen floor with a surreptitious spurt. The evening would be upon him.

The meal was finished, and he had relished the potatoes fried in butter, the cold boiled pork, homemade bread, and
rhubarb sauce. Carson Hymerson was in no haste now to rise, but drank a third cup of tea. At a remark upon the return of Bill Burnstile with a family, he sucked his lips and said complacently:

“Yes, rolling stone, Bill. Expect he’ll be pulling out of
here
, even, one of these times, eh? Yes, he did collect a family, all right. Guess his woman’s a pretty fair woman to help get along too, or he wouldn’t be able to make a payment on a place like he has.” He made the pronouncement with an unwavering, as it were a significant gaze of the little blue eyes in the direction of his wife, and Richard Milne turned to her. He would have to look up Bill while he was here.

“All the old neighbours,” she assented, while Carson rapidly demanded how long he intended to stay. “Most of them are here yet. Not many have moved away.”

“A few days, perhaps longer,” Richard said, with an assumption of certainty surprising to himself, adding, “I think I’ll take a stroll down the road this evening.”

Carson seemed to be replying to his wife. “Good riddance if some would get out, let their land be farmed right.” A thought seemed to strike him. “You wouldn’t be going to Lethen’s to-night, would you?”

“Yes,” agreed Richard Milne candidly. “I’ll probably call there.” He paid no more attention to the anxious, almost signalling look of the woman than Carson Hymerson himself did. The latter seemed to regard him with stupefaction, which merged into an awkward grin of mocking badinage.