Between the Flowers: A Novel

Chapter 2

· 2 · T HE CART bounced at a smart pace up the rough hill roads while Mrs. Crouch clutched at the seat with one hand and fanned herself with a hymn book in the other. Now and then she glanced at her flowers, and often at Marsh, but each time found him straight mouthed and hard eyed. He commented on nothing , though his deep gray eyes, swinging slowly from this to that, missed nothing by the road; a clump of purple ironweed in some grassy space, the white and pale lavender of the wild asters scattered here and there among the trees, clusters of beech nuts that hung sometimes above his head, and the sky-a high blue August sky where a few powdery white clouds drifted. "I always rest my horses at th' top of a hill," he explained in a half apologetic, half defensive tone as he stopped his team in a shady spot at the top of the high land that divided Costello's Valley from the Little South Fork Country. "I noticed you was an uncommon careful driver," the postmistress answered, and smiled to see that her flowers had lost few petals on the way. "You get careful-haulin' nitroglycerin," he said, and was silent then while he sat and looked down into the Little South Fork Country. He saw a broad sweep oflevel farming land, cut by a creek, and encircled by high but gently sloping hills, some wooded, some in corn, with here and there a rolling pasture field dotted with sheep and cows. The floor of the valley was given almost entirely to cane and tobacco and corn. The corn stood high and a rich dark green with its spreading tassels shining golden brown. The few log or 15 BETWEEN THE FLOWERS frame houses, surrounded by orchards and log barns, were mostly on the lower slopes of the hills, set in wide yards where sometimes a horse or calves grazed; and over the whole of the valley there was a peace and a quiet and a dreaming like that of an old man sleeping in the sun. "It's a pretty farmin' country," he said, without taking his eyes away. Mrs. Crouch nodded. "Aye, but you ought to see it in th' fall. There's somethin' so quiet an' safe like about th' fall-specially after a good crop year like we're havin' now." "Yes. That would be a pretty time." He looked across the valley, up through a grove of trees, and above the trees he could see bits of a great gray-white house, flanked by weather stained rock chimneys surrounded by barns and smoke houses, and towering above it all was the wide sweep of a high hill pasture field. He nodded toward the farm. "Whose place is that?" "Costello's," Mrs. Crouch answered with a short, hard emphasis on the name. "Is that where Logan Ragan's girl lives?" She nodded so violently that the purple pansies on the black straw sailor jiggled. "Yes. It is.-Now don't misunderstand me. I was never one for meddlin'.-But if you're got any sense you'll give that mail to Juber when you get there an' stay away from th' girl. She's somethin'like a load a dynamite anyhow." He turned to her and smiled, a quick flashing smile that bared his teeth and showed them white and fine with a pointed tooth on each side. "I'm a good hand at haulin' nitroglycerin." "Ifn Logan an' all his brothers turned loose on you, an' then her Uncle John found out his Delph was so much as eastin' sheep's eyes at a stranger your nitroglycerin would seem like clabbered milk alongside of it all.-You'd better stay by me, an' not go mixin' 'round her." He laughed and started his team. "I only meant to see Doriean ' well-I'd like to hear this girl sing. I've heard about her singin'." "Listenin's all you'd better do. John went to law an' took her from her mother-th' Costellos can win any law suit in this county -when she wanted to take her to Oregon where she went when she married again. An' he's not aimin' for nobody to take her away from him." 17 "She goes with this Logan," he insisted. Mrs. Crouch shook her head. "That's different. Th...