One morning after breakfast, when he had been there less than three weeks, Sam beckoned to her with his great thumb. She followed him into the hall and he shut the door.
“You kinda follow me after a half hour or so,” he whispered to her. “I’ll be in the barn cleaning out the manure. Got something to tell you.”
“Why don’t you tell me now, Sam?” she asked, surprised. His full red face was strangely unyouthful, close to hers like this. He had already lost his front side teeth. He was not yet twenty-five.
“You’ll thank me for not telling you here,” he replied. “It’s about your brother.”
She stopped, frightened. “All right, Sam,” she said quietly.
In the kitchen, over the dishes, she searched for excuses. “I believe I’ll stir up some applesauce,” she said to Bart’s mother. “I’ll go out and pick up some corncobs to start the fire up a little.”
“I told Sam to get them last night,” the mother answered.
“He forgot,” said Joan. “I’ll tell him.”
In the barn, above the smoking manure, she heard Sam’s coarse whispering. He leaned upon the spade, his little hot eyes boldly upon her, glancing now and then at her fullness.
“I heard something last night, Jo. Never mind where I heard it, but I heard it, straight from a colored girl. She’s looking for your brother. Says he owes her something and she’s going to get it. She’s not all colored — she’s pretty near three-fourths white. Name’s Fanny. She heard he’d come back.”
“How did she hear?” Joan asked. She knew he was staring at her, but she would not seem to know. She could penetrate that shallow skull. He turned away and spaded with elaborate ease about the edge of a stall. “Oh, women like her — they got ways of knowing — they find out anything they want to find out.”
She did not speak. She stood watching his spade searching out the filth and lifting it. The stench overwhelmed her — rank, penetrating, hot. He stood in it, breathing it in and out. She turned quickly and went outside the barn, panting for the clean air.
But she was grateful for the warning, else how would she had known so swiftly what to do that next afternoon? It was a still, fair afternoon, and she had just come down from the attic. She had gone to find Francis, but when she lifted the latch he lay on the bed, his hands folded under his head, asleep. He lay very still, breathing so gently she could not hear him. Upon his face was a look of deep repose. She closed the door again, softly. Let him rest. He seemed so seldom to rest. In the close tense stillness in which he now held himself there was no rest. He had in so short a time changed all the loose gamboling ways of his youth to this controlled stillness of the body. It was as though under his clothes his body were bound in secret chains. So let him rest.
She went out into the sunshine of the afternoon. It was not late, but the sun would soon be gone. She turned westward down the road, to walk a little while, her face toward the sun. In the barn the men were milking. She could hear Bart’s voice roaring at a cow: “Stand over there, Bessy! Careful now, you—”
She set her face steadily westward.
It was then that she saw the girl coming toward her. She came up the road, walking with a sort of springy dancing step, and she had a child with her, a little boy. She had been carrying him, but when she saw Joan she set the child down in the dusty road and led him toward her.
Joan stopped, waiting, looking at the two. Of course this was Fanny. She remembered now she had seen this face, this gay careless passionate pretty face, the last time she had been at the mission with her father. This girl had been there. She remembered her wearing a thin red flowered dress through which her skin had shone, golden. The girl’s face looked up to hers, a face like a dark, petunia, the full red lips, the great dark swimming eyes, black iris, clear white, passionate eyes and mouth, smooth round dark cheeks, strong short curly black hair under a small bright red felt hat.
“Are you Frank Richards’ sister? You favor him mightily.” The girl’s voice was like honey, thick-deep, sweet.
“Yes,” Joan said — no use trying to say anything else. “I’m his sister — what do you want of him?”
“I heard he was here.”
She looked down into the black eyes. … And why should she now remember Miss Kinney, standing before the missionary meeting, talking about great eyes peering through the jungle, jungle eyes?
“He’s gone,” she lied. “He’s gone back to his job.”
“Could you kindly tell me where he is?”
“Far away — away out west.”
“Is he coming back soon?”
“No — not soon — perhaps never. He didn’t say.”
In the twilight the child suddenly began to cry softly, and the girl slapped him sharply on the cheek. “Shut up, you!” The child turned and buried his face in her skirt, and sobbed noiselessly. He was too thinly dressed and Joan saw he was shivering.
“He’s cold,” she exclaimed.
“He wouldn’t be so cold if he’d walked more instead of fretting me to carry him,” the girl said petulantly. But Joan dropped to her knees, not able to bear the child’s noiseless weeping. A little child ought not to know how to weep silently, she thought. He must have been many times afraid before he could have taught himself to weep like that.
She began to unbutton her jacket.
“I have a sweater underneath,” she said. “Let me wrap it about him.” She took off the garment and knelt upon the ground and slipped the child’s arm through the sleeves and turned them back over his hands. Without knowing it she was coaxing him, talking to him tenderly, persuading his little chilled body into the wrap. “There now, little boy! Now, this hand, now we’ll button it up warm and tight. See, I’ll put your own belt around to hold it close There … there …”
The child, won by her voice, looked at her, and she saw his face fully, near to her own. Her heart turned in her breast. Francis had been beautiful, but this child was the most beautiful she had ever seen. This little face was the face of a dream child. She stared into it, trembling, drawn, repelled. Francis, her mother, her father, her own self — all of them were there in this jungle child’s lovely face, but to them all were added the darkness, the passion, the power of the jungle.
“He’s your own brother’s child.” She heard the girl’s deep wild voice. “He put this child in me. He come and met me in the woods down by the stream and put this child in me and then he went away and left it on me. I got no way to keep him. If a man fathers a child in me, he’s got to take it or pay for it, one or other. Else I can’t make my living. And I’m wanting to settle down. I got a colored fellow will marry me if I can do something about this child. It’s your own brother’s — I can prove it.”
“Don’t tell me anything!” Joan whispered. “I believe what you say. I don’t want to know. Let me think.”
She rose to her feet and stood looking at the child. He looked back to her silently, comforted by the jacket, trying to hold his lips against quivering. From under his fabulous lashes he looked up, his eyes unearthly large. He could not possibly understand. He was too small. And yet he seemed to know his circumstances. She loved him suddenly, and she knew she could not let him go — she must keep hold of him — her mother, her father, Francis, all of them were here in this tiny body. His blood was theirs.
“If you will wait a few days,” she began, breathless, still looking down at him, “not more than a week — say a week from today — I’ll bring you a little money. I have to get it from the bank. I haven’t much, but I’ll surely help you. And I’ll think what to do — if you’ll just go home now. I’ll be here a week from today at this same time with the money. You can trust me, can’t you? My father used to preach in South End.”