"Not enough to hurt. Thar ain't nothin' but flowers left out by this time, I reckon."
Old Matthew's cheeks were as red as winter apples, and his eyes twinkled like black haws in their sockets. "He! He! When thar ain't nothin' to hurt, we've no need to worry!"
As they trudged away, she turned and looked after them. She wanted to ask what they had heard of the shooting; but she resisted the impulse until they were too far away for her words to reach them. Standing there, while the two figures dwindled gradually into the blue distance, she was visited again by the feeling that the moment was significant, if only she could discover the meaning of it before it eluded her. Strange how often that sensation returned to her now! Everything at which she gazed; the frosted brown and yellow and wine-red of the landscape; the shocked corn against the sunset; the figures of the two men diminishing in the vague smear of the road; all these images were steeped in an illusion of mystery. "I've let myself get wrought up over nothing," she thought, with an endeavour to be reasonable.
By the time she came within sight of the house again the afterglow was paling, and a chill had crept through the thick shawl that she wore. Perhaps, in spite of old Matthew, there would be a heavy frost before morning, and she was glad to reflect that only the few summer flowers in her mother's rockery would be blighted. Smoke was rising from two of the chimneys, and she knew that Mary Joe had kindled fires in the kitchen and in her mother's chamber. Already Fluvanna would be well on with the milking. It was the first time Dorinda had trusted it to the girl and Nimrod, and she hoped that there would be nothing to find fault with when she went out to the barn.
Two hours later, when the milking and the straining were both over, she hurried out of the dairy at the noise of wheels in the darkness. As the buggy drew up to the steps, she saw that her mother was seated between Rufus and Nathan; and even before she caught the words they shouted, she understood that the boy had been discharged. It was what she had expected; yet after the assurance reached her, her anxiety was still as heavy as it had been all day. When her eyes fell on her mother's shrunken figure she realized that the old woman must have paid a fearful price for her son's freedom. "She looks bled," the girl thought bitterly. "She looks as if she would crumble to a handful of dust if you touched her." A hot anger against Rufus flamed in her heart. Then she saw that the boy was shaking with emotion, and her anger was smothered in pity. After all, who was to blame? Who was ever to blame in life?
"It's all right, Dorinda," Nathan said, as he helped Mrs. Oakley to the ground and up on the porch. "Your Ma held up splendidly, but it's been too much for her. She's worn clean out, I reckon."
"I wish you'd been there to see the way she did it," Rufus added. "Nobody said a word after she got through." Had he actually forgotten, Dorinda asked herself, that his mother had sworn to a lie in order to save him?
[XIII]
For the second time in her life Mrs. Oakley allowed herself to be put to bed without protest. She hung limp and cold when they placed her in a chair, and watched her children with vacant eyes while Rufus piled fresh logs on the fire and Dorinda brought bottles of hot water wrapped in her orange shawl. When the grey flannelette nightgown was slipped over her shoulders, the old woman spoke for the first time since she had entered the house.
"Dorinda, the Lord gave me strength."