“Don’t hurry,” they all said, but she was in a fever of hurry. Pack up his few things — send the clothes to the mission. She had said to the new minister when they were looking at the bedroom, “Would you take a few clothes of his to the mission? He’d want the—”
The young man pursed his full lips. “I’m not sure just when I’ll be going — I’ve not decided about going on with that work — the people in the church—”
“Never mind,” she said quickly. “I’ll take them myself.”
She was going away, just as soon as she could get things packed. She was glad there was so little — glad nearly everything had to be left because it belonged to the people. Even the dishes from which she had eaten bread and milk and the cakes her mother had made and meat and vegetables and deep pies — old familiar precious dishes—“Run and get me the tall cake dish, darling!” “Where’s the bowl we put fruit in, Hannah!”—even the dishes were not theirs. Nothing had been really theirs. She would take the round-topped trunk — her clothes, the books of course, her mother’s own linen and silver. Perhaps she’d better not take anything at first, just pack and store them somewhere and find Francis. Strange of Frank not even to write!
Then nearly a week after the death, there was Francis’ letter. She came from the study where she had been sorting her father’s books and there was the letter in the hall. “Looks like Frank’s writing, but the postmark isn’t New York. I can’t make it out,” Hannah had called.
She went at once and opened the letter quickly. No, it was not from New York. It was from a place in Michigan, but it was Frank’s letter.
DEAR JOAN—
I lost my job and here I am with a couple of fellows. I’m looking for work here. They say there is a lot of work at General Motors. I expect I’ll get a job. As I am a little short, please send me anything you can.
He did not even know. He had not heard. She tore the letter into small pieces and left the heap upon the table.
… So what could she do? The house stretched about her, empty, inexorable, waiting for her to go, waiting to begin another life. It was through with her. She was terrified of this house. She ran out into the garden. It was nearly Thanksgiving. She had not thought how nearly Thanksgiving it was. But now a load of cornstalks was being drawn to the church door, the cornstalks they always used as a background for pumpkins and fruits. There was a loud shout from the wagon as it drew near, and the horses stopped in front of her, breathing out steam. A strong bulky figure leaped down from the wagon and came near her. It was Bart. She smelled the odor of the dry stalks upon him, clean and earthy. Suddenly she began sobbing again, the sobs that jerked at her very entrails. “Oh, Bart,” she sobbed. “Oh, Bart, Bart!”
He came toward her, smiling, steady, sure, safe. He had his arm about her and she clung to him and he led her into the empty house. There in the empty sitting room she felt his lips upon hers at last. She was still for a moment, feeling. His lips were stiff and hard upon her mouth. Deep within her body her heart drew back in strange dismay. But she clung to him, sobbing. He was strong as a rock, his arms about her were like the walls of a house.
III
THIS RING UPON HER finger was new and stiff. She had never worn a ring before, because it soon irked her. Someone had given her a ring once when she was a little girl and she wanted to wear it because it was so pretty, a red bit of glass set in a loop of silver-washed metal, but she could not. In a little while it made her restless and she took it off. But this ring she must not take off. She must learn to wear it. She had set it herself upon her hand, a wide band of gold, old-fashioned and heavy. Bart had searched among the rings upon the counter in the little jeweler’s shop in Clarktown while she stood waiting until he had found a ring like his mother’s. “It’s got to last a long time,” he said. When the clerk had fitted it to her finger and given it to them, Bart had tried it on his own hand. But it would go over no finger except the little one, and there it stuck upon the crooked joint.
There was no need to wait. There was no one to consider. Why should she consider those who had not considered her? She would slip out of that old life. It could be nothing to any of them what she did. She did not want to tell anybody she was going to marry Bart Pounder. She did not want to see that surprised look—“Bart Pounder?” She silenced her own heart savagely. “Yes — Bart Pounder — who else is there?”
She went to Mr. Winters, who was an elder, in the evening after store hours. He was there alone, searching over his shelves for something someone had wanted in the day and he could not find. It was his usual evening occupation. “If you can just wait till tomorrow, I can find it,” he said a dozen times a day. Upon bits of paper he scrawled, “Mrs. Parsons — ink eraser”—“a spool of sixty white for Mrs. Bradley”—“Billings a chipping knife.” When she came in tonight she could hear him muttering mildly, “Now where in tuck did I put that?”
“Mr. Winters, will you please tell them I shall be leaving the manse right away?”
He left off muttering and turned to her, kind, protesting. “Now don’t you let them hurry you.”
“No, but I have made my plans.”
“Going away?”
“Yes, I’m going away.”
Next morning Mrs. Winters came bustling up the steps. “Joan, I came right over. Mr. Winters told me. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going away, Mrs. Winters.”
“Yes, but—”
“I’m not a child, you know. I’m grown up. I have my plans. I’ll write you.”
Mrs. Winters could not help. No one could really help. It was better to be silent, to make her own life. She would not forget that only by death was her father saved from these people.
But when she said good-bye to Hannah, she clung to her a moment. Hannah said, patting her back briskly, “Did you write me that little letter, Joan, so’s if I don’t make it with this new minister’s wife, I could go and try some of the summer folks over at Piney Cove?” Joan released her instantly. “Yes, Hannah.” She opened her bag and took out the letter. This is to introduce Hannah Jackson, our general servant for more than twenty years. We have always found her clean, honest—
“It’s hard on a body,” said Hannah fretfully, “at this age to be having to find a new place and I haven’t chick nor child.”
“Yes, it’s hard,” said Joan quietly. “It’s hard at any age.”
There could not be, of course, any white satin nor any of that dreaming. White satin would have sat strangely upon her with Bart standing by her in his bursting blue suit. So she put on her old orange wool dress and her brown coat and the small brown felt hat and she and Bart stood before the county clerk, repeating his words. He was a small, wry-faced man with big loose lips in a wizened face. The day was cold with November and his thin-curved nose was damp and red, and he wiped his hand across it often. “You can sign there,” he said, pointing with his nail-bitten forefinger.
She signed her name steadily, “Joan Pounder.” Steadily she forced her hand to the name she had taken for her own, shaping its unfamiliar letters for the first time. She stood and watched Bart hold the pen clumsily like a farm tool in his great hand. He wrote his name in a childish angular scrawl beside her neat small script. She stood for an instant looking at the two names. Then she said, “Take me home, Bart.”
“Giddap there!” he shouted at his two horses. He clacked the reins across their backs and they began to trot briskly, their rustbrown coats shining in the wintry sun.