The New Englander
Her name was Elsie Leander and her girlhood was spent on her father'sfarm in Vermont. For several generations the Leanders had all lived onthe same farm and had all married thin women, and so she was thin. Thefarm lay in the shadow of a mountain and the soil was not very rich.From the beginning and for several generations there had been a greatmany sons and few daughters in the family. The sons had gone west or toNew York City and the daughters had stayed at home and thought suchthoughts as come to New England women who see the sons of theirfathers' neighbors slipping away, one by one, into the West.Her father's house was a small white frame affair and when you went outat the back door, past a small barn and chicken house, you got into apath that ran up the side of a hill and into an orchard. The trees wereall old and gnarled. At the back of the orchard the hill dropped awayand bare rocks showed.Inside the fence a large grey rock stuck high up out of the ground. AsElsie sat with her back to the rock, with a mangled hillside at herfeet, she could see several large mountains, apparently but a shortdistance away, and between herself and the mountains lay many tinyfields surrounded by neatly built stone walls. Everywhere rocksappeared. Large ones, too heavy to be moved, stuck out of the ground inthe centre of the fields. The fields were like cups filled with a greenliquid that turned grey in the fall and white in the winter. Themountains, far off but apparently near at hand, were like giants readyat any moment to reach out their hands and take the cups one by one anddrink off the green liquid. The large rocks in the fields were like thethumbs of the giants.Elsie had three brothers, born before her, but they had all gone away.Two of them had gone to live with her uncle in the West and her oldestbrother had gone to New York City where he had married and prospered.All through his youth and manhood her father had worked hard and hadlived a hard life, but his son in New York City had begun to send moneyhome, and after that things went better. He still worked every dayabout the barn or in the fields but he did not worry about the future.Elsie's mother did house work in the mornings and in the afternoons satin a rocking chair in her tiny living room and thought of her sonswhile she crocheted table covers and tidies for the backs of chairs.She was a silent woman, very thin and with very thin bony hands. Shedid not ease herself into a rocking chair but sat down and got upsuddenly, and when she crocheted her back was as straight as the backof a drill sergeant.The mother rarely spoke to the daughter. Sometimes in the afternoons asthe younger woman went up the hillside to her place by the rock at theback of the orchard, her father came out of the barn and stopped her.He put a hand on her shoulder and asked her where she was going. "Tothe rock," she said and her father laughed. His laughter was like thecreaking of a rusty barn door hinge and the hand he had laid on hershoulders was thin like her own hands and like her mother's hands. Thefather went into the barn shaking his head. "She's like her mother. Sheis herself like a rock," he thought. At the head of the path that ledfrom the house to the orchard there was a great cluster of bayberrybushes. The New England farmer came out of his barn to watch hisdaughter go along the path, but she had disappeared behind the bushes.He looked away past his house to the fields and to the mountains in thedistance. He also saw the green cup-like fields and the grim mountains.There was an almost imperceptible tightening of the muscles of his halfworn-out old body. For a long time he stood in silence and then,knowing from long experience the danger of having thoughts, he wentback into the barn and busied himself with the mending of anagricultural tool that had been mended many times before.The son of the Leanders who went to live in New York City was thefather of one son, a thin sensitive boy who looked like Elsie. The sondied when he was twenty-three years old and some years later the fatherdied and left his money to the old people on the New England farm. Thetwo Leanders who had gone west had lived there with their father'sbrother, a farmer, until they grew into manhood. Then Will, theyounger, got a job on a railroad. He was killed one winter morning. Itwas a cold snowy day and when the freight train he was in charge of asconductor left the city of Des Moines, he started to run over the topsof the cars. His feet slipped and he shot down into space. That was theend of him.Of the new generation there was only Elsie and her brother Tom, whomshe had never seen, left alive. Her father and mother talked of goingwest to Tom for two years before they came to a decision. Then it tookanother year to dispose of the farm and make preparations. During thewhole time Elsie did not think much about the change about to takeplace in her life.The trip west on the railroad train jolted Elsie out of herself. Inspite of her detached attitude toward life she became excited. Hermother sat up very straight and stiff in the seat in the sleeping carand her father walked up and down in the aisle. After a night when theyounger of the two women did not sleep but lay awake with red burningcheeks and with her thin fingers incessantly picking at the bed clothesin her berth while the train went through towns and cities, crawled upthe sides of hills and fell down into forest-clad valleys, she got upand dressed to sit all day looking at a new kind of land. The train ranfor a day and through another sleepless night in a flat land whereevery field was as large as a farm in her own country. Towns appearedand disappeared in a continual procession. The whole land was so unlikeanything she had ever known that she began to feel unlike herself. Inthe valley where she had been born and where she had lived all her dayseverything had an air of finality. Nothing could be changed. The tinyfields were chained to the earth. They were fixed in their places andsurrounded by aged stone walls. The fields like the mountains thatlooked down at them were as unchangeable as the passing days. She had afeeling they had always been so, would always be so.Elsie sat like her mother, upright in the car seat and with a back likethe back of a drill sergeant. The train ran swiftly along through Ohioand Indiana. Her thin hands like her mother's hands were crossed andlocked. One passing casually through the car might have thought bothwomen prisoners handcuffed and bound to their seats. Night came on andshe again got into her berth. Again she lay awake and her thin cheeksbecame flushed, but she thought new thoughts. Her hands were no longergripped together and she did not pick at the bed clothes. Twice duringthe night she stretched herself and yawned, a thing she had never inher life done before. The train stopped at a town on the prairies, andas there was something the matter with one of the wheels of the car inwhich she lay the trainsmen came with flaming torches to tinker it.There was a great pounding and shouting. When the train went on its wayshe wanted to get out of her berth and run up and down in the aisle ofthe car. The fancy had come to her that the men tinkering with the carwheel were new men out of the new land who with strong hammers hadbroken away the doors of her prison. They had destroyed forever theprogramme she had made for her life.Elsie was filled with joy at the thought that the train was still goingon into the West. She wanted to go on forever in a straight line intothe unknown. She fancied herself no longer on a train and imagined shehad become a winged thing flying through space. Her long years ofsitting alone by the rock on the New England farm had got her into thehabit of expressing her thoughts aloud. Her thin voice broke thesilence that lay over the sleeping car and her father and mother, bothalso lying awake, sat up in their berth to listen.Tom Leander, the only living male representative of the new generationof Leanders, was a loosely built man of forty inclined to corpulency.At twenty he had married the daughter of a neighboring farmer, and whenhis wife inherited some money she and Tom moved into the town of AppleJunction in Iowa where Tom opened a grocery. The venture prospered asdid Tom's matrimonial venture. When his brother died in New York Cityand his father, mother, and sister decided to come west Tom was alreadythe father of a daughter and four sons.On the prairies north of town and in the midst of a vast level stretchof cornfields, there was a partly completed brick house that hadbelonged to a rich farmer named Russell who had begun to build thehouse intending to make it the most magnificent place in the county,but when it was almost completed he had found himself without money andheavily in debt. The farm, consisting of several hundred acres of cornland, had been split into three farms and sold. No one had wanted thehuge unfinished brick house. For years it had stood vacant, its windowsstaring out over the fields that had been planted almost up to thedoor.In buying the Russell house Tom was moved by two motives. He had anotion that in New England the Leanders had been rather magnificentpeople. His memory of his father's place in the Vermont valley wasshadowy, but in speaking of it to his wife he became very definite. "Wehad good blood in us, we Leanders," he said, straightening hisshoulders. "We lived in a big house. We were important people."Wanting his father and mother to feel at home in the new place, Tom hadalso another motive. He was not a very energetic man and, although hehad done well enough as keeper of a grocery, his success was largelydue to the boundless energy of his wife. She did not pay much attentionto her household and her children, like little animals, had to takecare of themselves, but in any matter concerning the store her word waslaw.To have his father the owner of the Russell place Tom felt wouldestablish him as a man of consequence in the eyes of his neighbors. "Ican tell you what, they're used to a big house," he said to his wife."I tell you what, my people are used to living in style."
* * * * *The exaltation that had come over Elsie on the train wore away in thepresence of the grey empty Iowa fields, but something of the effect ofit remained with her for months. In the big brick house life went onmuch as it had in the tiny New England house where she had alwayslived. The Leanders installed themselves in three or four rooms on theground floor. After a few weeks the furniture that had been shipped byfreight arrived and was hauled out from town in one of Tom's grocerywagons. There were three or four acres of ground covered with greatpiles of boards the unsuccessful farmer had intended to use in thebuilding of stables. Tom sent men to haul the boards away and Elsie'sfather prepared to plant a garden. They had come west in April and assoon as they were installed in the house ploughing and planting beganin the fields nearby. The habit of a lifetime returned to the daughterof the house. In the new place there was no gnarled orchard surroundedby a half-ruined stone fence. All of the fences in all of the fieldsthat stretched away out of sight to the north, south, east, and westwere made of wire and looked like spider webs against the blackness ofthe ground when it had been freshly ploughed.There was however the house itself. It was like an island rising out ofthe sea. In an odd way the house, although it was less than ten yearsold, was very old. Its unnecessary bigness represented an old impulsein men. Elsie felt that. At the east side there was a door leading to astairway that ran into the upper part of the house that was keptlocked. Two or three stone steps led up to it. Elsie could sit on thetop step with her back against the door and gaze into the distancewithout being disturbed. Almost at her feet began the fields thatseemed to go on and on forever. The fields were like the waters of asea. Men came to plough and plant. Giant horses moved in a processionacross the prairies. A young man who drove six horses came directlytoward her. She was fascinated. The breasts of the horses as they cameforward with bowed heads seemed like the breasts of giants. The softspring air that lay over the fields was also like a sea. The horseswere giants walking on the floor of a sea. With their breasts theypushed the waters of the sea before them. They were pushing the watersout of the basin of the sea. The young man who drove them also was agiant.
* * * * *Elsie pressed her body against the closed door at the top of the steps.In the garden back of the house she could hear her father at work. Hewas raking dry masses of weeds off the ground preparatory to spading itfor a family garden. He had always worked in a tiny confined place andwould do the same thing here. In this vast open place he would workwith small tools, doing little things with infinite care, raisinglittle vegetables. In the house her mother would crochet little tidies.She herself would be small. She would press her body against the doorof the house, try to get herself out of sight. Only the feeling thatsometimes took possession of her, and that did not form itself into athought would be large.The six horses turned at the fence and the outside horse got entangledin the traces. The driver swore vigorously. Then he turned and startedat the pale New Englander and with another oath pulled the heads of thehorses about and drove away into the distance. The field in which hewas ploughing contained two hundred acres. Elsie did not wait for himto return but went into the house and sat with folded arms in a room.The house she thought was a ship floating in a sea on the floor ofwhich giants went up and down.May came and then June. In the great fields work was always going onand Elsie became somewhat used to the sight of the young man in thefield that came down to the steps. Sometimes when he drove his horsesdown to the wire fence he smiled and nodded.
* * * * *In the month of August, when it is very hot, the corn in Iowa fieldsgrows until the corn stalks resemble young trees. The corn fieldsbecome forests. The time for the cultivating of the corn has passed andweeds grow thick between the corn rows. The men with their giant horseshave gone away. Over the immense fields silence broods.When the time of the laying-by of the crop came that first summer afterElsie's arrival in the West her mind, partially awakened by thestrangeness of the railroad trip, awakened again. She did not feel likea staid thin woman with a back like the back of a drill sergeant, butlike something new and as strange as the new land into which she hadcome to live. For a time she did not know what was the matter. In thefield the corn had grown so high that she could not see into thedistance. The corn was like a wall and the little bare spot of land onwhich her father's house stood was like a house built behind the wallsof a prison. For a time she was depressed, thinking that she had comewest into a wide open country, only to find herself locked up moreclosely than ever.An impulse came to her. She arose and going down three or four stepsseated herself almost on a level with the ground.Immediately she got a sense of release. She could not see over the cornbut she could see under it. The corn had long wide leaves that met overthe rows. The rows became long tunnels running away into infinity. Outof the black ground grew weeds that made a soft carpet of green. Fromabove light sifted down. The corn rows were mysteriously beautiful.They were warm passageways running out into life. She got up from thesteps and, walking timidly to the wire fence that separated her fromthe field, put her hand between the wires and took hold of one of thecorn stalks. For some reason after she had touched the strong youngstalk and had held it for a moment firmly in her hand she grew afraid.Running quickly back to the step she sat down and covered her face withher hands. Her body trembled. She tried to imagine herself crawlingthrough the fence and wandering along one of the passageways. Thethought of trying the experiment fascinated but at the same timeterrified. She got quickly up and went into the house.
* * * * *One Saturday night in August Elsie found herself unable to sleep.Thoughts, more definite than any she had ever known before, came intoher mind. It was a quiet hot night and her bed stood near a window. Herroom was the only one the Leanders occupied on the second floor of thehouse. At midnight a little breeze came up from the south and when shesat up in bed the floor of corn tassels lying below her line of sightlooked in the moonlight like the face of a sea just stirred by a gentlebreeze.A murmuring began in the corn and murmuring thoughts and memories awokein her mind. The long wide succulent leaves had begun to dry in theintense heat of the August days and as the wind stirred the corn theyrubbed against each other. A call, far away, as of a thousand voicesarose. She imagined the voices were like the voices of children. Theywere not like her brother Tom's children, noisy boisterous littleanimals, but something quite different, tiny little things with largeeyes and thin sensitive hands. One after another they crept into herarms. She became so excited over the fancy that she sat up in bed andtaking a pillow into her arms held it against her breast. The figure ofher cousin, the pale sensitive young Leander who had lived with hisfather in New York City and who had died at the age of twenty-three,came into her mind. It was as though the young man had come suddenlyinto the room. She dropped the pillow and sat waiting, intense,expectant.Young Harry Leander had come to visit his cousin on the New Englandfarm during the late summer of the year before he died. He had stayedthere for a month and almost every afternoon had gone with Elsie to sitby the rock at the back of the orchard. One afternoon when they hadboth been for a long time silent he began to talk. "I want to go livein the West," he said. "I want to go live in the West. I want to growstrong and be a man," he repeated. Tears came into his eyes.They got up to return to the house, Elsie walking in silence beside theyoung man. The moment marked a high spot in her life. A strangetrembling eagerness for something she had not realized in herexperience of life had taken possession of her. They went in silencethrough the orchard but when they came to the bayberry bush her cousinstopped in the path and turned to face her. "I want you to kiss me," hesaid eagerly, stepping toward her.A fluttering uncertainty had taken possession of Elsie and had beentransmitted to her cousin. After he had made the sudden and unexpecteddemand and had stepped so close to her that his breath could be felt onher cheek, his own cheeks became scarlet and his hand that had takenher hand trembled. "Well, I wish I were strong. I only wish I werestrong," he said hesitatingly and turning walked away along the pathtoward the house.And in the strange new house, set like an island in its sea of corn,Harry Leander's voice seemed to arise again above the fancied voices ofthe children that had been coming out of the fields. Elsie got out ofbed and walked up and down in the dim light coming through the window.Her body trembled violently. "I want you to kiss me," the voice saidagain and to quiet it and to quiet also the answering voice in herselfshe went to kneel by the bed and taking the pillow again into her armspressed it against her face.
* * * * *Tom Leander came with his wife and family to visit his father andmother on Sundays. The family appeared at about ten o'clock in themorning. When the wagon turned out of the road that ran past theRussell place Tom shouted. There was a field between the house and theroad and the wagon could not be seen as it came along the narrow waythrough the corn. After Tom had shouted, his daughter Elizabeth, a tallgirl of sixteen, jumped out of the wagon. All five children cametearing toward the house through the corn. A series of wild shoutsarose on the still morning air.The groceryman had brought food from the store. When the horse had beenunhitched and put into a shed he and his wife began to carry packagesinto the house. The four Leander boys, accompanied by their sister,disappeared into the near-by fields. Three dogs that had trotted outfrom town under the wagon accompanied the children. Two or threechildren and occasionally a young man from a neighboring farm had cometo join in the fun. Elsie's sister-in-law dismissed them all with awave of her hand. With a wave of her hand she also brushed Elsie aside.Fires were lighted and the house reeked with the smell of cooking.Elsie went to sit on the step at the side of the house. The corn fieldsthat had been so quiet rang with shouts and with the barking of dogs.Tom Leander's oldest child, Elizabeth, was like her mother, full ofenergy. She was thin and tall like the women of her father's house butvery strong and alive. In secret she wanted to be a lady but when shetried her brothers, led by her father and mother, made fun of her."Don't put on airs," they said. When she got into the country with noone but her brothers and two or three neighboring farm boys she herselfbecame a boy. With the boys she went tearing through the fields,following the dogs in pursuit of rabbits. Sometimes a young man camewith the children from a near-by farm. Then she did not know what to dowith herself. She wanted to walk demurely along the rows through thecorn but was afraid her brothers would laugh and in desperation outdidthe boys in roughness and noisiness. She screamed and shouted andrunning wildly tore her dress on the wire fences as she scrambled overin pursuit of the dogs. When a rabbit was caught and killed she rushedin and tore it out of the grasp of the dogs. The blood of the littledying animal dripped on her clothes. She swung it over her head andshouted.The farm hand who had worked all summer in the field within sight ofElsie became enamoured of the young woman from town. When thegroceryman's family appeared on Sunday mornings he also appeared butdid not come to the house. When the boys and dogs came tearing throughthe fields he joined them. He also was self-conscious and did not wantthe boys to know the purpose of his coming and when he and Elizabethfound themselves alone together he became embarrassed. For a momentthey walked together in silence. In a wide circle about them, in theforest of the corn, ran the boys and dogs. The young man had somethinghe wanted to say, but when he tried to find words his tongue becamethick and his lips felt hot and dry. "Well," he began, "let's you andme--"Words failed him and Elizabeth turned and ran after her brothers andfor the rest of the day he could not manage to get her out of theirsight. When he went to join them she became the noisiest member of theparty. A frenzy of activity took possession of her. With hair hangingdown her back, with clothes torn and with cheeks and hands scratchedand bleeding she led her brothers in the endless wild pursuit of therabbits.
* * * * *The Sunday in August that followed Elsie Leander's sleepless night washot and cloudy. In the morning she was half ill and as soon as thevisitors from town arrived she crept away to sit on the step at theside of the house. The children ran away into the fields. An almostoverpowering desire to run with them, shouting and playing along thecorn rows took possession of her. She arose and went to the back of thehouse. Her father was at work in the garden, pulling weeds from betweenrows of vegetables. Inside the house she could hear her sister-in-lawmoving about. On the front porch her brother Tom was asleep with hismother beside him. Elsie went back to the step and then arose and wentto where the corn came down to the fence. She climbed awkwardly overand went a little way along one of the rows. Putting out her hand shetouched the firm stalks and then, becoming afraid, dropped to her kneeson the carpet of weeds that covered the ground. For a long time shestayed thus listening to the voices of the children in the distance.An hour slipped away. Presently it was time for dinner and her sister-in-law came to the back door and shouted. There was an answering whoopfrom the distance and the children came running through the fields.They climbed over the fence and ran shouting across her father'sgarden. Elsie also arose. She was about to attempt to climb back overthe fence unobserved when she heard a rustling in the corn. YoungElizabeth Leander appeared. Beside her walked the ploughman who but afew months earlier had planted the corn in the field where Elsie nowstood. She could see the two people coming slowly along the rows. Anunderstanding had been established between them. The man reachedthrough between the corn stalks and touched the hand of the girl wholaughed awkwardly and running to the fence climbed quickly over. In herhand she held the limp body of a rabbit the dogs had killed.The farm hand went away and when Elizabeth had gone into the houseElsie climbed over the fence. Her niece stood just within the kitchendoor holding the dead rabbit by one leg. The other leg had been tornaway by the dogs. At sight of the New England woman, who seemed to lookat her with hard unsympathetic eyes, she was ashamed and went quicklyinto the house. She threw the rabbit upon a table in the parlor andthen ran out of the room. Its blood ran out on the delicate flowers ofa white crocheted table cover that had been made by Elsie's mother.The Sunday dinner with all the living Leanders gathered about the tablewas gone through in a heavy lumbering silence. When the dinner was overand Tom and his wife had washed the dishes they went to sit with theolder people on the front porch. Presently they were both asleep. Elsiereturned to the step at the side of the house but when the desire to goagain into the cornfields came sweeping over her she got up and wentindoors.The woman of thirty-five tip-toed about the big house like a frightenedchild. The dead rabbit that lay on the table in the parlour had becomecold and stiff. Its blood had dried on the white table cover. She wentupstairs but did not go to her own room. A spirit of adventure had holdof her. In the upper part of the house there were many rooms and insome of them no glass had been put into the windows. The windows hadbeen boarded up and narrow streaks of light crept in through the cracksbetween the boards.Elsie tip-toed up the flight of stairs past the room in which she sleptand opening doors went into other rooms. Dust lay thick on the floors.In the silence she could hear her brother snoring as he slept in thechair on the front porch. From what seemed a far away place there camethe shrill cries of the children. The cries became soft. They were likethe cries of unborn children that had called to her out of the fieldson the night before.Into her mind came the intense silent figure of her mother sitting onthe porch beside her son and waiting for the day to wear itself outinto night. The thought brought a lump into her throat. She wantedsomething and did not know what it was. Her own mood frightened her. Ina windowless room at the back of the house one of the boards over awindow had been broken and a bird had flown in and become imprisoned.The presence of the woman frightened the bird. It flew wildly about.Its beating wings stirred up dust that danced in the air. Elsie stoodperfectly still, also frightened, not by the presence of the bird butby the presence of life. Like the bird she was a prisoner. The thoughtgripped her. She wanted to go outdoors where her niece Elizabeth walkedwith the young ploughman through the corn, but was like the bird in theroom--a prisoner. She moved restlessly about. The bird flew back andforth across the room. It alighted on the window sill near the placewhere the board was broken away. She stared into the frightened eyes ofthe bird that in turn stared into her eyes. Then the bird flew away,out through the window, and Elsie turned and ran nervously downstairsand out into the yard. She climbed over the wire fence and ran withstooped shoulders along one of the tunnels.Elsie ran into the vastness of the cornfields filled with but onedesire. She wanted to get out of her life and into some new and sweeterlife she felt must be hidden away somewhere in the fields. After shehad run a long way she came to a wire fence and crawled over. Her hairbecame unloosed and fell down over her shoulders. Her cheeks becameflushed and for the moment she looked like a young girl. When sheclimbed over the fence she tore a great hole in the front of her dress.For a moment her tiny breasts were exposed and then her hand clutchedand held nervously the sides of the tear. In the distance she couldhear the voices of the boys and the barking of the dogs. A summer stormhad been threatening for days and now black clouds had begun to spreadthemselves over the sky. As she ran nervously forward, stopping tolisten and then running on again, the dry corn blades brushed againsther shoulders and a fine shower of yellow dust from the corn tasselsfell on her hair. A continued crackling noise accompanied her progress.The dust made a golden crown about her head. From the sky overhead alow rumbling sound, like the growling of giant dogs, came to her ears.The thought that having at last ventured into the corn she would neverescape became fixed in the mind of the running woman. Sharp pains shotthrough her body. Presently she was compelled to stop and sit on theground. For a long time she sat with closed eyes. Her dress becamesoiled. Little insects that live in the ground under the corn came outof their holes and crawled over her legs.Following some obscure impulse the tired woman threw herself on herback and lay still with closed eyes. Her fright passed. It was warm andclose in the room-like tunnels. The pain in her side went away. Sheopened her eyes and between the wide green corn blades could seepatches of a black threatening sky. She did not want to be alarmed andso closed her eyes again. Her thin hand no longer gripped the tear inher dress and her little breasts were exposed. They expanded andcontracted in spasmodic jerks. She threw her hands back over her headand lay still.It seemed to Elsie that hours passed as she lay thus, quiet and passiveunder the corn. Deep within her there was a feeling that something wasabout to happen, something that would lift her out of herself, thatwould tear her away from her past and the past of her people. Herthoughts were not definite. She lay still and waited as she had waitedfor days and months by the rock at the back of the orchard on theVermont farm when she was a girl. A deep grumbling noise went on in thesky overhead but the sky and everything she had ever known seemed veryfar away, no part of herself.After a long silence, when it seemed to her that she had gone out ofherself as in a dream, Elsie heard a man's voice calling. "Aho, aho,aho," shouted the voice and after another period of silence there aroseanswering voices and then the sound of bodies crashing through the cornand the excited chatter of children. A dog came running along the rowwhere she lay and stood beside her. His cold nose touched her face andshe sat up. The dog ran away. The Leander boys passed. She could seetheir bare legs flashing in and out across one of the tunnels. Herbrother had become alarmed by the rapid approach of the thunder stormand wanted to get his family to town. His voice kept calling from thehouse and the voices of the children answered from the fields.Elsie sat on the ground with her hands pressed together. An odd feelingof disappointment had possession of her. She arose and walked slowlyalong in the general direction taken by the children. She came to afence and crawled over, tearing her dress in a new place. One of herstockings had become unloosed and had slipped down over her shoe top.The long sharp weeds had scratched her leg so that it was criss-crossedwith red lines, but she was not conscious of any pain.The distraught woman followed the children until she came within sightof her father's house and then stopped and again sat on the ground.There was another loud crash of thunder and Tom Leander's voice calledagain, this time half angrily. The name of the girl Elizabeth wasshouted in loud masculine tones that rolled and echoed like the thunderalong the aisles under the corn.And then Elizabeth came into sight accompanied by the young ploughman.They stopped near Elsie and the man took the girl into his arms. At thesound of their approach Elsie had thrown herself face downward on theground and had twisted herself into a position where she could seewithout being seen. When their lips met her tense hands grasped one ofthe corn stalks. Her lips pressed themselves into the dust. When theyhad gone on their way she raised her head. A dusty powder covered herlips.What seemed another long period of silence fell over the fields. Themurmuring voices of unborn children, her imagination had created in thewhispering fields, became a vast shout. The wind blew harder andharder. The corn stalks were twisted and bent. Elizabeth wentthoughtfully out of the field and climbing the fence confronted herfather. "Where you been? What you been a doing?" he asked. "Don't youthink we got to get out of here?"When Elizabeth went toward the house Elsie followed, creeping on herhands and knees like a little animal, and when she had come withinsight of the fence surrounding the house she sat on the ground and puther hands over her face. Something within herself was being twisted andwhirled about as the tops of the corn stalks were now being twisted andwhirled by the wind. She sat so that she did not look toward the houseand when she opened her eyes she could again see along the longmysterious aisles.Her brother with his wife and children went away. By turning her headElsie could see them driving at a trot out of the yard back of herfather's house. With the going of the younger woman the farm house inthe midst of the cornfield rocked by the winds seemed the most desolateplace in the world.Her mother came out at the back door of the house. She ran to the stepswhere she knew her daughter was in the habit of sitting and then inalarm began to call. It did not occur to Elsie to answer. The voice ofthe older woman did not seem to have anything to do with herself. Itwas a thin voice and was quickly lost in the wind and in the crashingsound that arose out of the fields. With her head turned toward thehouse Elsie stared at her mother who ran wildly around the house andthen went indoors. The back door of the house went shut with a bang.The storm that had been threatening broke with a roar. Broad sheets ofwater swept over the cornfields. Sheets of water swept over the woman'sbody. The storm that had for years been gathering in her also broke.Sobs arose out of her throat. She abandoned herself to a storm of griefthat was only partially grief. Tears ran out of her eyes and madelittle furrows through the dust on her face. In the lulls thatoccasionally came in the storm she raised her head and heard, throughthe tangled mass of wet hair that covered her ears and above the soundof millions of rain-drops that alighted on the earthen floor inside thehouse of the corn, the thin voices of her mother and father calling toher out of the Leander house.
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