Delight (1926)/Chapter 8
Delight had finished her day's picking. She and Perkin had filled baskets with Damsons and Golden Drops and Green Gages from six that morning. It had been beautiful among the plum trees in the hazy sunlight, with the piles of gold and purple fruit getting higher and higher as more baskets were added. Perkin and she were good friends now. A change had come over him in the last month. He was as silent, as mysterious in the house as ever, but, out of doors, at their work he had become companionable. They were always together now, and the old people did not seem to mind. In fact they looked pleased when the two came in together. Joel was given more and more work to do on the farm, ploughing, cultivating, pruning, and, when he was there, Perkin never left her side. She never had a chance to speak with Joel, though she would have liked to, till Perkin told her that Joel and his wife hated the very sight of her, and after that she turned her head the other way.
Perkin was almost always kind to her though occasionally sombre fits would overtake him when he would not speak to her for hours, or, if he did speak, it was to find fault with the way she filled her baskets or missed branches that bore fruit. Sometimes he would jostle her out of his way, shoving his thin body against hers, with a strange, sullen gleam in his eyes. She was almost afraid of him.
She had earned enough at the fruit picking to pay for her board. Not a cent had been saved, though, and such board! Black, leathery meat, sodden pastry, half-sour bread, and not enough of anything. She had not minded much because she almost lived on fruit, but what would one do when the fruit was over? They had said nothing yet about her staying on, though she knew from remarks Perkin had made that it was intended that she should. Mrs. Heaslip had once said something about teaching her to knit later on.
The truth was that she was afraid to leave. If she did, she must drive to Brancepeth to take the train, and whom might she not meet in Brancepeth? The last night there seemed a nightmare. Her life there was but a dream. Now this life, as another dream, enfolded her. She rarely thought, and, when she did, it was in a puzzled, groping way. She hated to think. She lived from dawn to dark among the fruit, and, at night, slept dreamlessly beneath the eaves. There she was, strong, vital, rosy among these sallow, silent Heaslips, a creature of instincts, emotions, not much more developed intellectually than the soft-eyed Jersey in the byre, nor the wood pigeon that called among the cedars. Like the birds she felt a stir within her that urged her to fly before the winter, but she knew not where to fly, nor had she the money to take her further than Brancepeth.
The past month had made a change in her. She was thinner, and her face, neck, and arms were tanned a deep golden brown. Her hair, from going hatless in the sun, had been bleached almost to straw colour. Her eyes looked larger, deep, and ambient, beneath the thick lashes. Her hands and arms were covered with innumerable tiny scratches from thorns of the thimbleberry canes, and the skin on them was dry from constant burning of the sun. . . .
She was going to the stream to gather watercress for her tea. A fresh new growth had appeared, and, though the Heaslips looked askance at her plate heaped with it, she still brought it to the table, for her stomach was stubborn and the hunger refused to be appeased by bread and jam and tarts. She pictured herself in the winter going to the root-house to gnaw the turnips and mangolds. Why had God made her so hungry and then set her down here where there was so little food? Still she must not think hardly of Him, for there was her tea-set all safe and sound. . . .
The sky was like the inside of a shell this evening, all blending shades of pink and mauve and blue. Little gold-edged clouds as light as thistledown swam slowly in the silken air. No birds sang; but the stream gave forth a dreamy, sensuous song of its own as it pushed its sluggish way through reeds and grass. Down here she was so alone. It was her own safe place where no one came. She knelt on the narrow bridge of moss-grown boards and plunged her hands into the water among the cress. It was icy cold, delicious on her hot arms. She bent lower and pressed her palms on the cold sandy bottom of the stream among the roots of watercress. The old growth was covered with pretty white flowers, like candytuft and its leaves were bronze, but the new was short and green and tender. She began to pluck it carefully and lay it on the boards beside her. When she had a fair bunch she still lingered, pressing her cold, wet palms to her cheeks, her finger ends against her temples. It was inside there her brain was, the part one thought with, was cautious with, religious with. But the heart, right beneath the left breast, was the part one loved with, suffered with, sinned with. Gran had told her all this, and she was very glad she knew such things, for some poor girls was desperate ignorant of their insides and they got into trouble like as not.
She gazed dreamily at the tangle of lush growth around her, the tall Michaelmas daisies, the dogwood with its red stem and lead-coloured berries, the elderberry's richly purple cluster, the flaming spear of the butterfly weed, a patch of fringed gentian, like a bit of the sky fallen. No bluer, though, than the blue heron that started suddenly from among the cat-tails and flapped his great wings upward into the blue above. What had startled him? Someone moving there in the shadow of that black cedar.
It was Perkin. He came towards her slowly, his feet sinking in the moist velvet of the stream's brink, his large grey eyes fixed on her with an odd look.
"Why, Perkin, is that you?" And she explained: "I'm gathering watercress for my tea."
He came out on the board and knelt down beside her.
"Getting watercress, eh? You've struck a quiet place all right. It's as quiet as the bottom of the sea, ain't it?"
"There's a fresh growth come up. It's as tender as can be. Don't you like watercress?"
He shook his head. "I don't like any green stuff."
"Not when it's young and tender?" She did not like him so close beside her in that lonely spot. She did not like the way his breath came, so quickly and yet so heavily. Trying to be unembarrassed, a little playful, she held the fresh wet bunch of watercress against his mouth.
"Buy my watercress," she intoned, imitating an Old Country vender. "Fresh and tender. Fresh and tender."
In a sudden anger he tore it from her hand and flung it back into the stream. Then with a boy's sudden brutality he caught her to him and pressed his face cruelly against hers, twining his arms about her, struggling to join his lips to hers.
"You're fresh and tender," he gasped. "I want you. Now . . . now. . . ." He kept on repeating—"Now—" as they struggled. He seemed beside himself with passion. Could this be the sickly boy Perkin? Why, his arms were like steel. His head like a darting snake's.
Delight was filled with terror, as a doe that, having come to drink at a peaceful stream, finds herself attacked by some fierce creature of the forest.
"Let me go! Let me go! I'll scream."
Perkin laughed, his lips hot against hers. "Scream then. Go ahead, scream."
He said no more and she ceased to struggle, lying quietly in his arms, her eyes half-closed. She felt faint under the fury that blazed in his. She was conscious that his cheek and chin were beardless as a girl's, that he smelled of straw, of fruit, of hot human flesh. She lay so quietly that the boy laughed again in triumph.
"I said you'd find out some day which of us is the strongest. Now you know, eh?" He drew his head backward, with that snakelike gesture. He wanted to look into her face just a few inches below his, lying there, flushed, terrified, weak.
"Now you know, eh? Say, I've been dreaming of when I'd do this for a month. From the first minute I set eyes on you. As soon as I knowed you was to be my wife."
Her eyes were wide-open now, tragic; her clenched hands against his breast.
"Your wife, Perkin!"
"Well, that's what Fergussen brung you here for, isn't it? Aw, don't pretend you didn't know!"
"Fergussen. But why—why? He brought me here 'cause I ran away from the hotel. I didn't know where to go and he brought me here."
Perkin giggled. "Say, you are a little goose. Do you s'pose you've been any use here, to speak of? I mean the thimbleberries. Why it'd have taken ten like you to have picked enough to be worth while. It made me laugh to hitch up the waggon to take them to the station. We'd decided to let the crop go. The price wasn't worth pickin' them for anyway. We just put you at 'em to give you something to do, see?"
She was utterly bewildered. "But what did you want me for, then?"
"For this." He kissed her again. Then—"to marry me. To be my wife. Mrs. Perkin Heaslip. Fergussen knowed. Pa told him to fetch us a likely girl from town, so's I could marry her and make things sure. And make Joel sicker than ever . . . and he fetched you. . . . And Pa's got texts picked out to paint on the barn to celebrate the marriage and when you get a baby, and all. . . ."
He kissed her again in ecstasy, rocked her in his arms. . . . A shadow fell, a chill rose from the stream. Something crept out of the water on to the brink, and, with a squeak of anger and fear, leaped back again, making a tiny splash.
Delight shivered. Perkin's wife . . . forever shut in that secret farm . . . all that hate . . . those terrible texts on the wall . . . Perkin's arms, about her, his blazing grey eyes. . . .
Suddenly Jimmy's eyes were looking into hers, pleading, blue as a little child's; and his mouth, tender, a little sulky, but a dear mouth, after all. Oh, she loved Jimmy; she would not give in to Perkin. Stronger than she? Ah, but not more knowing. Her fingers twined themselves in the breast of his shirt. Her muscles stiffened. Her legs gripped the planks. Another effort, and she had thrown him from her into the water. Down among the watercress—into the soft, cold bed of the stream. He cried out as he struck the water. It splashed all over her, yet through the flying drops she saw his face upturned, terrified, contorted with rage.
She was flying from the place. She kept out of sight of the house, dodging behind bushes till she reached an old broken wall, alongside which she ran in a crouching posture till she gained the barnyard. A flock of geese waddled towards her, squawking with wings upraised, their roguish little eyes twinkling up at her, Delight, the poor farm girl, dripping wet, exhausted, her pulses throbbing like so many separate hearts. She could not hear the noises of the barn for their din. She pressed herself into the straw-stack and listened. By degrees the geese settled down again to their supper, still scolding about her in an undertone, still casting jeering looks and rocking on their short legs when they noticed her. The sound of milk hissing against a tin pail came out to her. Old Peake was milking, then. She might safely reach the loft.
She crept around the corner towards the door that led to the loft. Mr. Heaslip had been working on a new text that day. Now, in the reddish light, the letters blazed out at her:
VENGEANCE IS MINE
She fled with terror into the barn. Up the ladder she scrambled, thinking:
"Oh, let me once get up into the hay, and I'll hide there until morning. Then, in the early morning, I'll run away. Anywhere away from this frightening place."
She buried herself in the clean, prickly hay, drawing it over her in great sheafs, burrowing into it till she was out of sight.
Long fingers of sunlight quivered between the cracks. She could smell the fresh paint of the text outside the wall. . . . After a time Peake came up the steps to put down hay for the horses. They knew it, for they were stamping and uttering little impatient whinnies. Old Major was kicking his drinking pail about, as he always did when he heard the swish of the falling hay. What if Peake should stick his fork into her, kill her dead? They would find her body and perhaps they would be sorry. Tears of pity for that poor pierced body filled her eyes.
At last there was silence, save for the happy munching below, and, now and again, the rattle of a chain or a sleepy low from the byre, or the anguished cry of a fowl on the perch. Darkness fell.
The blackness of night closed over her like a great wing. She stared, open-eyed, into the dark. She thought:
"Ah, if I only had the tiniest bit of company! If only Lizzie, the cat, knew I was here she'd come and snuggle in beside me, I know. It's an awful thing to be in a big barn alone at night, with a comical text like yonder one on the wall."
As she stared, a firefly darted out from a crack somewhere and began to flit here and there before her eyes. Fiery little dashes it made, like bright stitches on the dark skirt of night. A sense of comfort warmed her. She thought:
"There, now. I hardly wish a thing till I get it. I always was a lucky one. If he will only stop about till I can get to sleep. . . ."
Even when she slept he did not leave her but flew about the loft with his little lamp all night.