Part 14 (2/2)

”Yes, it's that,” said Zalia.

He worked on again, but slowly, very slackly.

The sweat ran in great drops down his body; and sometimes he felt as if he would tumble head foremost into the corn. Zalia heard his breath come short and fast; she looked at him and asked what was the matter. His arms dropped feebly to his sides; and the hook and sickle fell from his hands.

”Zalia, I don't know ... but something's catching my breath like; and my eyes are dim....”

”It's the heat, Zeen, it'll wear off. Take a pull.”

She fetched the bottle of gin from the gra.s.s edge of the field, poured a sip down his throat and stood looking to see how it worked:

”Well?”

Zeen did not answer, but stood there s.h.i.+vering and staring, with his eyes fixed on a bluebonnet in the cut corn.

”Come, come, Zeen, get it done! Have just another try: it'll get cooler directly and we'll be finished before dark.”

”Oh, Zalia, it's so awfully hot here and it'll be long before it's evening!”

”But, Zeen, what do you feel?”

Zeen made no movement.

”Are you ill?”

”Yes, I am, Zalia. No, not ill, but I feel so queer and I think I ought to go home.”

Zalia did not know what to do: she was frightened and did not understand his funny talk.

”If you're ill ... if you can't go on, you'd better get home quick: you're standing there like a b.o.o.by.”

Zeen left his sickle on the ground and went straight off the field. She saw him go slowly, the poor old soul, lurching like a drunken man, and disappear behind the trees. Then she took her straw-band and bundled up all the little heaps of corn, one after the other, and bound them into sheaves. She next took the sickle and the hook and just went cutting away like a man: stubbornly, steadily, with a frenzied determination to get it done. The more the corn fell, the quicker she made the sickle whizz.

The sweat ran down her face; now and then, she jogged back the straw hat from over her eyes to see how much was left standing and then went on cutting, on and on. She panted in the doing of it.... She was there alone, on that outstretched field, in that heat which weighed upon her like a heavy load; it was stifling. She heard no sound besides the swish of her steel and the rustling of the falling corn.

When at last she could go on no longer, she took a sip at the bottle and got new strength.

The sun was low in the sky when she stood there alone on the smooth field, with all the corn lying flat at her feet. Then she started binding.

The air grew cooler. When the last sheaf was fastened in its straw-band and they now stood set up in heavy stooks, like black giants in straight rows, it began to grow dark. She wiped the sweat from her face, slipped on her blue striped jacket, put the bottle in her hat, took the sickle and hook on her shoulder and, before going, stood for a while looking at her work. She could now see so very far across that close-shorn plain; she stood there so alone, so tall in that stubble-field, everything lay so flat and, far away over there, the trees stood black and that mill and the fellow walking there: all as though drawn with ink on the sky. It seemed to her as if the summer was now past and that heavy sultriness was a last cramped sigh before the coming of the short days and the cold.

She went home. Zeen was ill and it was so strange to be going back without him. It was all so dreary, so dim and deadly, so awful. Along the edge of the deep sunken path the gra.s.shoppers chirped here and there, all around her: an endless chirping on every side, all over the gra.s.s and the field; and it went like a gentle woof of voices softly singing. This singing at last began to chatter in her ears and it became a whining rustle, a deafening tumult and a painful laughter. From behind the pollard her cat jumped on to the path: it had come to the field to meet her and, purring cosily, was now arching its back and loitering between Zalia's legs until she stroked it; then it ran home before her with great bounds. The goat, hearing steps approach, put its head over the stable-door and began to bleat.

The house-door was open; as she went in, Zalia saw not a thing before her eyes, but she heard something creaking on the floor. It was Zeen, trying to scramble to his feet when he heard her come in.

”Zeen!” she cried.

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