"Sometimes I've thought that mebbe if you an' me'd been of an age, an' not me near old enough to be your grandaddy, you an' me together, Judy, might a made sumpin out of our lives, anyway got in a little play along with the grind. Mebbe so, mebbe not. Whichever way it don't do no good to figger about it—ner no harm neither."
He smiled again his fine, dry smile.
After he was gone and she had watched his broad, bowed back disappear down the side of the ridge, she sat looking out across the wide expanse of country to the horizon. The glow of the sunset had faded and there was nothing left but a few broken horizontal bars of pale saffron, backed by gray and lavender. Between her eyes and the saffron bars the long stretch of hills and valleys was sinking swiftly into darkness. They looked at her palely across the gloom-filled distance with a sad, horizontal gaze, sad and level, like her own.
At last she got up abruptly from the doorstep and went into the house and to the bottom shelf in the cupboard where Jerry kept his rarely used demijohn of whiskey. She took out the corncob stopper, poured a few spoonfuls into a teacup and tasted it gingerly. It burned her lips and throat and some of it went down the wrong way. She made a wry face, coughed, gagged, rushed to the water bucket and drank a dipperful of water, then slackly set about gathering up the supper dishes.
She made no further attempt to find the cheer that lay in the demijohn; but as the weeks went by something of Jabez' poise and calm seemed to have settled on her spirit. Often, thinking of their talk and seeing in memory his fine, sad smile, the irritations of the household fell away from her and she seemed as if enfolded in a twilight peace. Having discovered its charm, she began to wear this memory as an amulet.
Through the spring and summer she spent much of her time in the garden and barnyard, leaving the house to clean itself. She raised chickens, geese, and turkeys and even bought a pair of rabbits from Aunt Selina and started a little rabbit colony in hutches built against the south side of the shed. Here the children were happy running about barefoot, digging in little gardens of their own, feeding the geese and chickens and poking carrots and clover into the rabbit hutches; and for the first time in their lives the mother and children moved together in harmony. When Jerry came home from the field and found them in the yard shutting up the broods of little chicks for the night and listened to their excited chatter and prattle, he passed on into the house feeling lonely and morose.
"I reckon I hain't much good here fer anything but to fetch in the money fer the shoes an' groceries," he said to himself, as he splashed the water over his face.
The young fellows were back from the war now—those who had not been killed. Ziemer Whitmarsh came home shell-shocked and good for nothing. He hung about the neighbors' barnyards drooling silly talk and remembering nothing. "What could you expect," everybody said, "when it was in the family anyway?"
"A sword is upon the boasters an' they shall become fools," Jabez Moorhouse was heard to mutter, as he looked after him with a shrug that was half pity, half contempt.
Marsh Gibbs bragged unceasingly about his exploits and his power to turn shot and shell and was listened to with respectful interest until it became known that he had got no further than Panama, where he had done nothing more exciting and dangerous than drive a mule team.