Home from the Hill (22 page)

That was the feeling that was new to her—admiration; and it sharpened the barb of the irony. She had been in love before. It had not been like this, not in any way; but she saw no virtue in disowning her past feelings. Her present love was not to be magnified by cheapening what she had felt in the past. What she felt now was superior to something genuine and deep, not to something shallow. She had been in love—but she had never admired a boy. And this was the boy whom her father had chosen to turn away!

It was an outdoors romance. It was spring, and the prairies shimmered with bluebonnets like morning dew. On the prairies at that season of tall skies and brilliant light it seemed you could see to the very curve of the earth, and on its rim, day after day, there lay a towering billowing weightless white thunderhead. The woods, still damp with spring rain, were yeasty with new life. It was his natural setting, and he opened her eyes to a new world—or rather, to the old one. She was amazed that one could find meaning in the different shapes of clouds, after first being amazed that there were recurring shapes to clouds. He might say that any Boy Scout could have told her that: with a Boy Scout she would not have gone out to look. A Boy Scout would not have been so delighted with her ignorance.

This had its awkward moments, too. “Didn't your father ever—?” he once began to say, when she had revealed some fresh astounding lack of information of the world in which she lived. No, her father had never. Her father had no masculine lore. There was no masculinity in her house. She had no brother, and her father was distinguishable from her mother by such secondary characteristics as that his towels were blue, hers pink, that he took his coffee with cream but no sugar, she hers with sugar but no cream. The boys she had known who were manly were also rough. Theron was manly, but so well-mannered that he sometimes made her feel crude. He had towards her, as a natural thing, the manners she had to remember to show towards her elders. And this was the boy her father had turned away!

Her father's suspicions (she had guessed them: he had maintained the silence he thought proper on such a subject) were proved more grotesque each day. Not only was Theron not a menace, he was almost tongue-tied in his propriety, so backward that it was not amusing, but almost painful to watch. He shied even at pointing out to her the domestic arrangements which now, as spring matured, nature was fostering on every side. Nevertheless, on their walks she questioned him. For she had become fascinated with the mysteries of spring, with the changes that each day brought. After the long rains the ground had burst from the thrust of impatient life. Violets and columbines and yellow ladies' slippers had come through, and the woods were shrill with the mating of birds. He had made her aware of the flourishing civilization underfoot, of the complicated, risky, bustling life led by the hardy race of little creatures just beneath humanity, and it became a part of her hobby to calendar their progress with the lengthening of the days. Daisies budded and burst in the fields and frothy toad spittle appeared on the stalks like a superabundance of vital sap bursting out. She had gotten some of it on her ankles and on the hem of her skirt as they crossed the field.

They had come out of the woods, hand in hand, and when she saw the windmill, “Oh! Let's climb it!” she had cried, and, still holding hands, they had run to it. He had gone first up the ladder—after hesitating for a moment—and then she had thought again of her father's suspicions of him. It was like him to decide it was less impolite for him to go first, than to stand below her skirts while she climbed the ladder.

They sat on the platform which went around the derrick just beneath the fan blades. Still winded from their run and from the climb, and a little heady from the height, they were silent. Below them the field of pale young grass sprinkled with white daisies and blue-and-white bluebonnets lay like a calm clear sea, sparkling in the late morning sunlight—the special sunlight of Saturday. A light breeze turned the creaking fan blades above their heads. Together they turned to each other, and there was a sudden breathlessness, like an inhalation, a diastole of nature, and the vanes overhead suddenly hushed. They heard the sibilant murmur of the woods. Then, as suddenly, the breeze freshened; the tree tops rustled, the field shimmered, the windmill stirred, and they felt the wind in their faces. One common current seemed to animate all that quickening life, pulsating, tingling, electrical. You could almost feel it, almost hear it. And then she did feel it. Then it was as if her own wintry, sluggish blood had fermented and ran drunk with warmth through her veins. Then the beauty of all things was an ache not to be borne alone. The windmill spun faster and faster, and they looked at each other in the clear, high, earth-free light, and she saw that yes, he had felt it too, was waiting for her to feel it, to turn to him. He took her in his arms and she felt his heart beat against the sweet intolerable ache in her breast. She drew him tight against her to soothe it, crush it, and she felt the quiver that her touch imparted to the hard young muscles of his back. She felt the ache in his breast, and then with the touch of their lips felt the ache in both their breasts become one, and felt it sigh itself into ease. Then she knew what he had done for her that no other boy had ever done. She could contemplate now for the first time without that instinctive shrinking the natural destiny of her ripening body. She was no longer jealous of its loveliness. Now she could at last imagine a time when to share it would bring no sense of loss, but one of fulfillment. That was his gift to her: through him she had made the great dreaded change, so quietly, so painlessly she had not known when, to womanhood.

30

There were moments when Theron's righteous resentment against Mr. Halstead was cooled by a breath of self-doubt. Was there something about him, something in his very looks which no one else had seen, but which Mr. Halstead, in just one look, had seen? Was there something he had done and forgotten, but which Mr. Halstead had seen and remembered? Mr. Halstead's suspicion had been quite specific, and against that Theron had no need to defend himself. Still, why had Mr. Halstead suspected him? He was, he told himself, conscious of having done many bad things. It was an embarrassment to his attempted humility, however, that he could recall very few specific examples. And, try as honestly as he might, he could discover nothing in his life which even if misinterpreted would justify Mr. Halstead in what he had done.

What was there about him different from the other young men who had come to call on Libby? The only differences Theron could find were ones which he could not help thinking ought to have made Mr. Halstead prefer him. His name alone, he felt, ought to have secured a welcome for him.

Having always been indulged, he had no immunity against dislike, criticism, denial. It now became his whole existence. Oysterlike, he devoted himself to spinning a pearl of self-justification around this grain of sand that chafed him. Always proud, but heretofore indifferent to the opinions of others, in search of refutation to Mr. Halstead's low estimate of him, he now became vain, and in his vanity irritable. He had been happy. If, with the world's encouragement, he had thought well of himself, some of that amiability had colored his view of others, too. Now he hated Mr. Halstead as if making up for never hating anyone before. He was ashamed of what had been done to him, and more ashamed at keeping his ignominy a secret. He was irritable with his mother because he had a secret from her. He was irritable with his father because of his own failure to act with the prompt vengeance with which a son of his father's ought to have acted. He was irritable with Libby. He had been insulted and had done nothing to defend his honor, and now he could not, because of her.

Libby had a way of starting a conversation not at the beginning, but at the point to which her thoughts had brought her. On one of their walks she said, “Which boy—take your pick—would you rather I went with to the graduation dance?”

He knew this habit of hers, had come to sense the thoughts that had gone before her words. Sensing them now, he colored, frowned. “Who all has asked you?” he said.

“Well, no one yet. It's still early.”

“Oh, anyone,” he said.

“Which would you least rather I went with?”

“Oh, go with any!”

“How provoking. Don't you have any jealousy at all? Don't you care?”

“Yes, I care,” he said. “I don't want you to go with any. If I had my wants you wouldn't go.”

This violated their agreement. It was a wordless agreement, and he was the one for whose sake it had been made. The agreement was to accept their situation, since accept it they must, and since to complain was only to embarrass him.

So she ignored his outburst. “I want you to decide,” she said. “I want it to be the boy of your choice.”

“Maybe nobody will ask you,” he said.

“Oh, what a mean thing to say!” she cried, and asked for a kiss. For this had the right, light tone.

He kissed her, and he thought that because they daren't arouse her father's suspicions he must allow her to go to the dance with some other boy, and he returned her kiss fiercely, possessively, and he felt her lips, under the harsh pressure of his, part slightly. He was aware of the perfumed warmth that arose from her breasts. He crushed her against him, thrilling at her gasp, and he thought how he had thought of this, of this and more, time and again, increasingly. Dwelling constantly in his thoughts upon her father's suspicions, to his dismay he had found himself more and more guilty, at least in desire.

“Oh,” she gasped. “Oh, Theron! You're hurting me.”

It was as if he had forgotten her, and this, when he let her go, was a new source of shame.

31

The young man—who he was does not matter—one of those who had heard himself described in the baccalaureate just the day before as a conqueror of the coming age, and now bearing himself as if he believed it—arrived at the Halstead door, corsage in hand, to claim Libby for the graduation dance. He was met by her father, who found in his face no promise of immediate conquest, and admitted him to the parlor. Mr. Halstead gathered up his newspaper and nodded the young man to his armchair and left the room, calling up as he passed through the hall:

“He's here, Libby.”

He proceeded to the kitchen. Shortly there reached him there the creak of footsteps on the stairs, the murmur of voices, the opening and closing of the front door, whereupon he got up, returned through the dining room, and, still reading, passed his wife at the foot of the stairs.

He looked up, however, when just then the doorbell gave a tinkle. He turned. The door opened and through it came a hand upon which perched a beribboned cellophane box containing a white gardenia. The young man's fallen face duly followed.

“I might as well leave this for her,” he said to Mr. Halstead's wife. “It's no use to me.”

As neither of them came to relieve him of it, he deposited the box on the hallstand.

“Well,” he said, “I
do
(as if he had some reason for
not)
hope she feels better soon.

“Well, good night, all,” he said, and with sickroom softness, eased the door shut behind him.

“She took sick,” said his wife. “All of a sudden.”

This, the corsage, the waiting dance: it was all highly reminiscent.

Mrs. Halstead had expected that it would be, and she preempted the reminiscence. “Just like that Hunnicutt boy,” she said. “Theron.”

For she had been reminded of Theron Hunnicutt when fifteen minutes before she had gone in to find her daughter dressed in her new white gown seated at the vanity trying to make her face while great silent tears ran down her cheeks. She pretended not to notice, and nothing was said. Nothing had ever passed between them about that boy, that night, what her father had done to him. Still, her mother had sometimes wondered. Now she knew. It was confirmed by the frightened sincerity of Libby's unwilling efforts to get herself ready for this date, and by the distress it was causing her. Poor child, poor pretty thing, her heart was aching, and it made her mother's heart ache to see. Then the doorbell rang and the powder she had spread on her face was all streaked with a fresh flow of tears. They heard her father answer the door as he had that other night, then heard him make his flat announcement, as he had not that other night, and Libby turned to her and said, “Mama, I can't. I can't go. I'm sick. You'll have to tell him I can't go. I'm sick.” And she looked it.

So now as her husband stood with his paper trailing the floor, undecided whether he was somehow being not only flouted, but burlesqued, or whether (women were such poorly made contraptions) his daughter was really not well, Mrs. Halstead seized the moment to wonder why he had turned that Hunnicutt boy away. After all, he came of a very good family, and he looked so—

“I don't want that kind of boy around my daughter,” he said. “I don't know what you've got in mind for yours, but I don't want that kind of boy around my daughter.”

Which was more than enough—little was ever needed—to subdue Mrs. Halstead. “I just wondered,” she murmured.

“Now you know,” he said.

Her interference whetted his suspicions. He dropped his newspaper, removed his reading glasses and put on his other ones, and mounted the stairs. At her door he started to knock, then decided against it and grasped the handle, then, after all, knocked.

One look at his daughter both shamed his suspicion that she might be shamming sick, and quickened all his other suspicions.

“I'll be all right,” she said. She looked guilty.

“Too bad,” he said. “Graduation dance. New dress. Once in a lifetime occasion. Too bad.”

“Yes,” she said, and her eyes filled with tears.

“Well, get better soon,” he said. He turned to leave. “Oh. He left the flower,” he said. “Gardenia.”