The vaqueros were hustling the utensils and the remaining food under cover. Joseph watched until the first rain began to fall, and then he sauntered to the porch and sat on the top step, in front of Elizabeth; his shoulders slumped forward and his elbows rested on his knees. “Did you like the fiesta, Elizabeth?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you ever see one before?”
“I’ve seen fiestas before,” she said, “but never one quite like this. Do you think all the electricity in the air might have made the people wild?”
He turned about and looked into her face. “More likely the wine in their stomachs, dear.” His eyes narrowed seriously. “You don’t look well, Elizabeth. Are you feeling well?” He stood up and leaned over her anxiously. “Come inside, Elizabeth, it’s getting too cold to sit out here.”
He went in ahead of her and lighted the lamp hung from a chain in the center of the room, and then he built up a fire in the stove and opened the draft until it roared softly up the chimney. The rain swished gustily on the roof, like a rough broom sweeping. In the kitchen Alice was humming softly in memory of the dance. Elizabeth sat down heavily in a rocking-chair by the stove. “We’ll have a little, late supper, dear.”
Joseph knelt on the floor beside her. “You look so tired,” he said.
“It was the excitement, all the people. And the music was—well, it was strenuous.” She paused, trying to think what the music and the dancing meant. “It was such an odd day,” she said. “There was the outwardness, the people coming and the mass and the feasting and then the dance, and last of all the storm. Am I being silly, Joseph, or was there a meaning, right under the surface? It seemed like those pictures of simple landscapes they sell in the cities. When you look closely, you see all kinds of figures hidden in the lines. Do you know the kind of pictures I mean? A rock becomes a sleeping wolf, a little cloud is a skull, and the line of trees marching soldiers when you look closely. Did the day seem like that to you, Joseph, full of hidden meanings, not quite understandable?”
He was still kneeling, bending close to her in the low light of the lamp. He watched her lips intently, as though he could not hear. His hands stroked his beard roughly, and he nodded again and again. “You see closely, Elizabeth,” he said sharply. “You look too deeply into things.”
“And Joseph, you did feel it, didn’t you? The meanings seemed to me to be a warning. Oh—I don’t know how to say it.”
He dropped back and sat on his heels and stared at the specks of light that came from the cracks in the stove. His left hand still caressed his beard, but his right moved up And rested on her knee The wind cried shrilly in the oak tree over the house, and the stove ticked evenly as the fire died down a little.
Alice sang, “Corono ale de fibres que es cosa mia—”
Joseph said softly, “You see, Elizabeth; it should make me less lonely that you can see under the covering, but it doesn’t. I want to tell you, and I can’t. I don’t think these are warnings to us, but only indications how the world fares. A cloud is not a sign set up for men to see and to know that it will rain. Today was no warning, but you are right. I think there were things hidden in today.” He licked his lips carefully. Elizabeth put out her hand to stroke his head. “The dance was timeless,” Joseph said, “do you know?—a thing eternal, breaking through to vision for a day.” He fell silent again, and tried to back his mind out of the heavy and vague meanings that rolled about it like grey coils of fog. “The people enjoyed it,” he said, “everyone but Burton. Burton was miserable and afraid. I can never tell when Burton will be afraid.”
She watched how his lips curved up for a moment in faint amusement. “Will you be hungry soon, dear? You can have your supper any time—just cold things, tonight.” These were words to keep a secret in, she knew, but the secret came sneaking out before she could stop it.
“Joseph—I was sick this morning.”
He looked at her compassionately. “You worked too hard at the preparation.”
“Yes—maybe,” she said. “No, Joseph, it isn’t that. I didn’t mean to tell you yet, but Rama says—do you think Rama knows? Rama says she is never wrong, and Rama should know. She’s seen enough, and she says she can tell.”
Joseph chuckled, “What does Rama know? You’ll choke yourself on words in a moment.”
“Well, Rama says I’m going to have a baby.”
Her words fell into a curious silence. Joseph had settled back and he was staring at the stove again. The rain had stopped for a moment, and Alice was not singing.
Elizabeth gently, timorously broke into the silence. “Are you glad, dear?”
Joseph’s breath broke heavily out. “More glad than I ever have been.”—then, in a whisper, “and more afraid.”
“What did you say, dear? What was that last? I didn’t hear.”
He stood up and bent down over her. “You must take care,” he said sharply. “I’ll get a robe to go about your knees. Take care against cold, care against falling.” He tucked a blanket about her waist.
She was smiling, proud and glad of his sudden worry. “I’ll know what to do, dear, don’t fear for me. I’ll know. Why,” she said confidently, “a whole plane of knowledge opens when a woman is carrying a child. Rama told me.”
“See you take care then,” he repeated.
She laughed happily. “Is the child so precious to you already?”
He studied the floor and frowned. “Yes—the child is precious, but not so precious as the bearing of it. That is as real as a mountain. That is a tie to the earth.” He stopped, thinking of words for the feeling. “it is a proof that we belong here, dear, my dear. The only proof that we are not strangers.” He looked suddenly at the ceiling. “The rain has stopped. “I’ll go to see how the horses are.”
Elizabeth laughed at him. “Some place I’ve read or heard a strange custom, maybe it’s in Norway or Russia, I don’t know, but wherever it is, they say the cattle must be told. When anything happens in a family, a birth or a death, the father goes to the barn and tells the horses and cows about it. Is that why you are going, Joseph?”
“No,” he said. “I want to see that all the halter ropes are short.”
“Don’t go,” she begged. “Thomas will look after the stock. He always does. Stay with me tonight. I’ll be lonely if you go out tonight. Alice,” she called, “will you set the supper now? I want you to sit beside me, Joseph.”
She hugged his whole forearm against her breast. “When I was little a doll was given me, and when I saw it on the Christmas-tree an indescribable heat came into my heart. Before I ever took up the doll I was afraid for it, and filled with sorrow. I remember it so well! I was sorry the doll was mine, I don’t know why. It seemed too precious, too agonizingly precious to be mine. It had real hair for eyebrows and real hair for lashes. Christmas has been like that every time since then, and this is a time like that. If this thing I have told you is true, it is too precious, and I am afraid. Sit with me, dear. Don’t go walking in the hills tonight.”
He saw that there were tears in her eyes. “Surely I’ll stay,” he comforted her. “You are too tired; and you must go to bed early from now on.”
He sat with her all evening, and went to bed with her, but when her breathing was even he crept out and slipped on his clothes. She heard him going and lay still, pretending to be asleep. “He has some business with the night,” she thought, and her mind reverted to what Rama had said. ‘If he dreams you’ll never know his dreams.’ She went cold with loneliness, and shivered, and began to cry softly.
Joseph stepped quietly down from the porch. The sky had cleared, and the night sharpened with frost, but the trees still dripped water, and from the roof a tiny stream fell to the ground. Joseph walked straight to the great oak and stood beneath it. He spoke very softly, so no one could hear.
“There is to be a baby, sir. I promise that I will put it in your arms when it is born.” He felt the cold wet bark, drew his fingertips slowly downward. “The priest knows,” he thought. “He knows part of it, and he doesn’t believe. Or maybe he believes and is fearful.”