“I’ll get a car one of these days,” he said. “But I’ve got to get ahead a little. And a car’s no good for plowing. Got to have horses on a farm, car or no car.” He turned to grin at her. A look she was beginning to know came over his face. His nostrils thickened a little, his lips parted and loosened. “I don’t know if we could sit so close in a car though, my girl,” he whispered heavily. He had small yellowish soft-looking teeth set in gums too wide and pale. She looked away quickly.
They were moving out of the country she knew into a rugged hilly land, whose valleys were dark with woods. Between the rough fields were stone walls piled of the stones from the land. Everywhere the last colors of autumn were subsiding into dun and gray. Only the oak trees still burned dully red, but a few more nights of frost would strip them, too. Then it would be winter. She was glad for Bart, she told herself, gazing straightly into the dying landscape. If it had not been for Bart she would have been quite alone and winter was coming. In so short a time had she been left quite alone.
Then at a bend of the narrow earth road rose a big frame house with green blinds, an oblong of white against the land. A few great maple trees stood about it, their skeleton limbs not hiding it.
“There’s the house,” said Bart, pointing with his whip. “The folks will be expecting us. Don’t you mind my mother.”
He had never mentioned his home before except to say shortly, “I live with my folks. I’m to have the place if I stay with them — so I’m staying.”
They drew up and the door opened and now she was near enough to see them, his father, his mother, his brother. They came out, one by one, his mother last, and stood waiting for her. Her heart rushed eagerly toward them; she peered through the dusk to see them — father, mother, brother. But she liked the house, so cleanly white and green, she liked the maples. Under their bare limbs the unraked leaves lay in a carpet of ashy gold.
She wanted to like everything. Here was to be her home. She was glad they were all to live together. She did not want to live alone with Bart. A tag end of Scripture flew into her mind: “And the lonely he hath set into families.”
She jumped out of the buggy and ran across the dry frostbitten grass and through the rustling fallen leaves toward the three waiting figures. She ran toward the woman, holding out her hands. She put her arms about the stiff body, and smelled a faint soapy cleanness upon the cheek beneath her lips. “I’m Joan,” she said. She wanted very much to have them love her. She would make them love her.
“Well!” said Bart’s mother. “Well, I’m sure—” Under her lips Joan felt the passive plump cold cheek.
“Here’s the old man,” said Bart. “And this here’s Sam — my kid brother.”
She put out her hand quickly and felt it taken twice by huge stiff hands, the same except that the old man’s hand was cold and the young man’s hot and damp in the palm, and did not quickly let hers drop. The old man did not speak. “Pleased,” Sam muttered. He had small hot brown eyes like Bart’s, under rough hedgy red brows. They stood staring at her, unblinking, out of the twilight, and she stared back at them until the silence was heavy enough to crush her. She must speak and break this deep silence.
“It’s a lovely house,” she said at last.
“Won’t you come in?” said Bart’s mother.
“We’d better go in,” said Bart.
They turned and tramped in silence into the house, and she followed them into a small square hall from which a staircase rose steeply. There was a hesitation she did not understand. Then the mother said, “Well, use the front stairs for once.” But the two men went through the hall to the kitchen, and Bart said, “Reckon I’ll wash up in the kitchen, too.”
“Come on up and I’ll show you the room,” said the mother. She mounted the stairs, not touching the rail, stepping carefully, and Joan followed, her bag in her hand. The stairs turned sharply into a narrow hall encircled by closed doors.
“Here,” said the mother. She opened a door and went in first and Joan followed her. “You’ll find everything handy, I hope.”
“Oh, yes,” said Joan eagerly, staring about her. There was a maple bureau, a washstand with a pitcher and basin, a rocking chair, a double bed. Upon the bare clean painted floor were bits of old flowered carpet, neatly hemmed.
“We have a bathroom,” she heard Bart’s mother say. “It’s down the hall. But the men don’t use it. They take the tub to the woodshed when they need to wash. I can’t have the smell of stable in the house. But you can use the bathroom with me, I reckon.”
Joan did not hear her. There was only this double bed. There she must sleep this night with Bart, this night that was already come down upon her. She had not wanted to think of it. But now the night was here.
“Well, we’ll be ready to eat as soon as you come down,” continued Bart’s mother. “I’ll just go and stir up the potatoes.” She went out, closing the door, but Joan did not hear her footsteps on the stairs.
In the dusky room she sat down. She felt as though she had been running too quickly for a long time and now motion was stopped forever. Silence was deep about her. Through the window she saw the endless rolling twilight hills, the dark trees, the faint pale lines of dividing stone walls, the empty shorn fields. There was no other house to be seen. She ran, half afraid, close to the window, but there were no other houses. A great gray barn loomed directly in front of the house. She could see the shadowy figure of Bart’s father moving in the light of the oil lantern he carried. His head was lost in the early darkness but she saw clearly his shapeless legs in overalls, the clump of his hand grasping the handle of the lantern. He slid the barn doors shut and came toward the house, his shadow warped and monstrous upon the dry ground. She stood in the chill darkness, afraid to live. For the moment she passionately envied her mother, safe in her grave, having no more to face the fall of night, the dawn of day. She was afraid of night, afraid of day.
Then she felt the ring upon her finger. She had forgotten it for a while in her excitement, but now she felt it, strange and stiff upon her flesh. She turned resolutely and found matches beside the oil lamp on the mantelpiece and struck a light and lit the lamp. It was very clean and the chimney shone. The flame licked about the cleanly wiped wick and there was a streak of smoke. She turned it down quickly — but there the black was.
It didn’t matter — she was relieved with light. She took off her hat and then lifted the pitcher and poured out water to wash her hands. The faint clink of the pitcher was like a crack in the silence. The house was full of silence, the same silence that hung over the hills and the woods. She found herself moving carefully that she might not break the silence again. She opened the door and tiptoed down the carpeted stairs, down the dark narrow hall. There was no voice to guide her, nothing except a vein of light under a door at the end. She opened, it and there they all sat at the table, waiting for her. They did not speak when she came in. She took the empty chair by Bart, trying to smile. No one spoke, but Sam was watching her from under his bushy brows. Bart’s mother rose and went into the kitchen and came back with a dish of smoking boiled potatoes.
“We’ll eat now,” she said.
She had known silence before. After her mother’s death there had been silence of a voice no longer heard. There was the increasing silence in the house after Rose had gone and then Francis. There was the silence in which she had lived with her father and in which he had died. There was the silence into which Bart had come, from which he had taken her, the silence of herself, bereft.
But none of it had been like this silence. They sat down and suddenly in the stillness, in the stillness of field and wood and tree and night sky about the solitary house, Bart’s father said shortly, “We’ll have the blessing — God, for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful. Amen.”