The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [111]
"He and Charles do their best, but they aren’t always successful."
"And where are you from, my dear? You are far more blooming than many of these young ladies I see around here."
"I came from Illinois. Quincy."
"You’re used to the west, then. So many aren’t." She shook her head. "I’m of course glad to see that spring is at hand, but when the ice breaks up, I fear the fevers will set in. Yet it’s lovely country all the same."
I nodded. That was our whole conversation, but she had a lively manner and a pleasing smile. I wanted to tell her how the image of her face had carried me through my own fever, but I was too shy to do so.
She moved on to another group, and I found Susannah Jenkins, who was so thin from the privations of the winter that I was shocked, though I didn’t say anything. She told me her parents were thinking of returning to Massachusetts. Winter in the hay house had been dauntingly arduous. All their relatives back there were urging them in every letter. "But we can’t go now," said Susannah. "The rivers are frozen, and the Missouri roads would simply kill Papa. Something is going to. We aren’t so pleased with K.T. as we were." She gave me a rueful smile. Had I heard about Mrs. James? Her little boy had died in the cold weather, and now she had a new baby that didn’t look very ready for K.T., either. "Mama says grief will carry her off if this one dies, too. That man made her stay out there by herself all winter, even after everyone else had come into town."
"All the cruel ones aren’t on the other side, are they?"
"Well, Papa says he’s a spy. At any rate, he seems just the sort of man who does everything he pleases. But he’s such a fine-looking man. It makes you wonder."
"What does it make you wonder?"
"Oh, my dear, don’t you always give fine-looking men all the credit in the world? I do. It’s a weakness of character, I suppose."
"I would say it’s only a weakness of judgment. But sometimes those are worse, aren’t they?"
"I wonder what Mrs. James would say if she were here. No doubt she still loves him." Susannah looked around the room. "At least you can tell why she chose him. I do so wonder sometimes why this one goes with that one. And then, after you’re married, you always have to make it look satisfactory, don’t you?"
I regarded Susannah with some interest, not sure how general, or personal, she meant these remarks to be. Gossip was Lawrence’s main recreation, so I wondered how carefully I should reply. And then I thought, what difference would it make? I said, "Each marriage works in its own way, is what I think. No one looking in ever knows how those looking out are feeling."
"Well, poor Mrs. James."
"We’re going out to our claim in a day or so. I’ll take her some tea and some other things."
Poor Mrs. James, indeed. The very thought of her troubles made me feel low. And she was so pretty, or had been. I was as bad as Susannah in my way—even though Mr. James’s good looks didn’t move me, Mrs. James’s good looks did.
Some of the singers of Company A now got together and put on a program of songs, including one that had all the New Englanders nodding but made me laugh. It was to the tune of "Old Hundred" and went:
We ask not that the slave should lie As lies his master at his ease Beneath a silken canopy Or in the shade of blooming trees.
We ask not eye for eye that all Who forge the chain and ply the whip Should feel their torture, while the thrall Should wield the scourge of mastership.
We mourn not that the man should toil: ’Tis nature’s need, ’tis God’s decree; But let the hand that tills the soil Be, like the wind that fans it, free.
As Roland Brereton would have said, this song was those New Englanders all over. And they all knew the words, even Thomas, though I had never heard it. They joined in lustily, as if actually singing a hymn. Did they really