My heart and my flesh

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Annie cried again and said that she was thirsty and Theodosia went into the wooded hill behind the cabin to try to find the spring, but she did not look for a path and her search led them far up the hillside but gave them nothing. It was cool under the trees and Annie forgot her need for the water. Presently they saw two small animals, and Annie ran after them, calling them her little cats. The small beasts ran close to the ground and kept together. They were strange creatures and they made the wooded hill seem strange to Theodosia, as if she had never seen it before. Annie herself seemed strange, having forgotten her thirst now in an ecstasy of pleasure over the little animals, which she tried to catch with her hands.

“They’re little doggies,” she said. “They’re my little cats.”

Theodosia tried to catch them too, and she closed her hands upon them once, but they were elusive and quick although they seemed unable to run very fast. They ran along, tumbling at each other, keeping together. Theodosia knelt quickly and spread her skirt before them, but they turned aside and ran away. Then suddenly they went into a hollow stump through a little hole at the side, and Theodosia poked the umbrella into the hole and Annie called, “Come out, little doggies,” but a cat-like hiss came from the stump and when Theodosia jerked the umbrella away a quick paw shot out and a snarl followed. The girls ran away from the stump, afraid of it, and presently they went back toward the cornfield. The sun was low now and they hurried across the pasture. They had not asked leave to go.

At the end of the pasture where the fodder stalks were scattered near the feeding ricks two of the dogs came toward them, Blix and Lady, and in an instant Theodosia knew that they were not coming for play. Blix and Lady and Roscoe were coming fast upon them, full speed now, rushing down the littered pasture, their eyes set and their jaws opened, their backs a straight line. Theodosia screamed and caught Annie’s hand as she ran, and the dogs were upon them, five beasts now. She dropped the umbrella and turned screaming toward the barn, dragging Annie, and Uncle Red came from the cattle shed and shouted something. The dogs stopped at the umbrella and set upon it with their teeth and tore it to pieces at once, but the delay gave Theodosia time to come near the barn before they set upon her again. All the dogs were out now, a dozen or more, some of them worrying the torn pieces of the umbrella and some in a pack around the girls. Uncle Red beat them away with a rail and carried Annie to the house, for she was weak with terror.

“Um—m! Skunk!” he said. “That-there skunk. Has you-all youngones been handlen a skunk or a polecat maybe?”

Theodosia remembered the terror and fury in the eyes of the dogs and all through the evening she sat quietly with a book she tried to read. Annie cried out in her sleep many times during the night. The next day the dogs were locked in the apple house, but Annie would not go beyond the doorway unless she held her grandfather’s hand. Soon afterward the week came to an end and the visit was over.

The ladies of the town played a game with cards, a simple game that did not prevent conversation. On the day of the card party there was a faint flutter in the town, the ladies riding by in phaëtons and traps, wearing their best. If Charlotte Bell entertained the group she would, at some time during the party, sit at the piano with Theodosia standing near, and they would play some simple part of an overture or a popular air. The Bell house was a white frame structure to which several additions had been built, a long portico or gallery running almost the entire length of the front giving a pleasant open space above stairs as well as below where one might take the air. On summer evenings Charlotte would sit for a while on the upper gallery with the two girls and sing, sitting apart from the house where Horace Bell came and went lightly, never troubling to hide his destination whether it was a gambling party with men or an evening with some woman. Seen once at dusk as she sat on the upper gallery, her head against the bank of vines, her two little girls grouped close about her to sing, she had looked like the pitying madonna diverted by hate. She had wanted a rightly-placed hearth. Now she played much with Theodosia, their simple airs arising above the quiet of the street. Horace, departing, would wave them a gay farewell, a greeting that was all of himself, lightly given, or once in a while he would stop briefly beside the piano and join his great voice to the song, booming the words across the fiddle notes, taking a pride and a delight in his great running voice that emasculated the piano. When he had made his point he would leave in a thunder of laughter, waving a hasty good-bye.

When Annie was seven years old she sickened of a fatal child malady and died. The funeral was held in the church, and Luce wept when she saw the Bells weeping as they sat near together at the front of the church in the space respectfully left for the mourners, seeing them huddled together and set apart by death. The minister preached of the kingdom of heaven, the world to come, and of becoming as a little child. A lady, Mrs. Bent, sang a song while the organ hummed softly. She was full-breasted and maternal, and as she sang she looked as if she only a moment before had held a child in her arms, and the words of the song seemed truer as she sang them, truer than the sayings of the minister to which they lent truth. Her own children sat with their father in a pew at the side, and the words of the song came very gently across the church as she looked as if some child might easily creep into her arms.

I think when I read that sweet story of old,