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“A newborn baby to get salt on its stomach-where did she get the idea?”
He says, “Give her the salt.” And he stays to see her squeeze the milk on her salty finger, lay the finger to the infant’s lips, and follow it with her nipple.
He asks her what the reason is and she tells him.
“And does it work every time?”
She tells him-a little surprised that he is as stupid as they are, though kinder-that it works without fail.
“So where you come from they all have their wits about them? And are all the girls strong and good-looking like you?”
She says that she would not know about that.
Sometimes visiting young men, educated and from the town, used to hang around her and her friends, complimenting them and trying to work up a conversation, and she always thought any girl was a fool who allowed it, even if the man was handsome. Mr. Suter is far from handsome-he is too thin, and his face is badly pocked, so that at first she took him for an old fellow. But he has a kind voice, and if he is teasing her a little there could be no harm in it. No man would have the nature left to deal with a woman after looking at them spread wide, their raw parts open to the air.
“Are you sore?” he says, and she believes there is a shadow on his damaged cheeks, a slight blush rising. She says that she is no worse than she has to be, and he nods, picks up her wrist, and bows over it, strongly pressing her pulse.
“Lively as a racehorse,” he says, with his hands still above her, as if he did not know where to drop them next. Then he decides to push back her hair and press his fingers to her temples, as well as behind her ears.
She will recall this touch, this curious, gentle, tingling pressure, with an addled mixture of scorn and longing, for many years to come.
“Good,” he says. “No touch of a fever.”
He watches, for a moment, the child sucking.
“All’s well with you now,” he says, with a sigh. “You have a fine daughter and she can say all her life that she was born at sea.
Andrew arrives later and stands at the foot of the bed. He has never looked on her in such a bed as this (a regular bed even though bolted to the wall). He is red with shame in front of the ladies, who have brought in the basin to wash her.
“That’s it, is it?” he says, with a nod-not a glance-at the bundle beside her.
She laughs in a vexed way and asks, what did he think it was? That is all it takes to knock him off his unsteady perch, puncture his pretense of being at ease. Now he stiffens up, even redder, doused with fire. It isn’t just what she has said, it is the whole scene, the smell of the infant and milk and blood, most of all the basin, the cloths, the women standing by, with their proper looks that can seem to a man both admonishing and full of derision.
He can’t think of another word to say, so she has to tell him, with rough mercy, to get on his way, there’s work to do here.
Some of the girls used to say that when you finally gave in and lay down with a man-even granting he was not the man of your first choice-it gave you a helpless but calm and even sweet feeling. Agnes does not recall that she felt that with Andrew. All she felt was that he was an honest lad and the one that she needed in her circumstances, and that it would never occur to him to run off and leave her.
Walter has continued to go to the same private place to write in his book and nobody has caught him there. Except the girl, of course. But things are even now with her. One day he arrived at the place and she was there before him, skipping with a red-tasselled rope. When she saw him she stopped, out of breath. And no sooner did she catch her breath but she began to cough, so that it was several minutes before she could speak. She sank down against the pile of canvas that concealed the spot, flushed and her eyes full of bright tears from the coughing. He simply stood and watched her, alarmed at this fit but not knowing what to do.
“Do you want me to fetch one of the ladies?”
He is on speaking terms with the Edinburgh women now, on account of Agnes. They take a kind interest in the mother and baby and Mary and Young James, and think that the old father is comical. They are also amused by Andrew and Walter, who seem to them so bashful. Walter is actually not so tongue-tied as Andrew is, but this business of humans giving birth (though he is used to it with sheep) fills him with dismay or outright disgust. Agnes has lost a great part of her sullen allure because of it. (As happened before, when she gave birth to Young James. But then, gradually, her offending powers returned. He thinks that unlikely to happen again. He has seen more of the world now, and on board this ship he has seen more of women.)
The coughing girl is shaking her curly head violently.
“I don’t want them,” she says, when she can gasp the words out. “I have never told anybody you come here. So you mustn’t tell anybody about me.”
“Well you are here by rights.”
She shakes her head again and gestures for him to wait till she can speak more easily.
“I mean that you saw me skipping. My father hid my skipping rope but I found where he hid it-but he doesn’t know that.”
“It isn’t the Sabbath,” Walter says reasonably. “So what is wrong with you skipping?”
“How do I know?” she says, regaining her saucy tone. “Perhaps he thinks I am too old for it. Will you swear not to tell anyone?” She holds up her forefingers to make a cross. The gesture is i
But he says that he is willing to swear.
“I swear too,” she says. “I won’t tell anyone you come here.”
After saying this quite solemnly, she makes a face.
“Though I was not going to tell about you anyway.”
What a queer self-important little thing she is. She speaks only of her father, so he thinks it must be she has no brothers or sisters and-like himself-no mother. That condition has probably made her both spoiled and lonely.
Following this swearing, the girl-her name is Nettie-becomes a frequent visitor when Walter intends to write in his book. She always says that she does not want to disturb him but after keeping ostentatiously quiet for about five minutes she will interrupt him with some question about his life or bit of information about hers. It is true that she is motherless and an only child and she has never even been to school. She talks most about her pets-those dead and those living at her house in Edinburgh-and a woman named Miss Anderson who used to travel with her and teach her. It seems she was glad to see the back of this woman, and surely Miss Anderson would be glad to depart, after all the tricks that were played on her-the live frog in her boot and the woolen but lifelike mouse in her bed. Also Nettie’s stomping on books that were not in favor and her pretense of being struck deaf and dumb when she got sick of reciting her spelling exercises.
She has been back and forth to America three times. Her father is a wine merchant whose business takes him to Montreal.
She wants to know all about how Walter and his people live. Her questions are by country standards quite impertinent. But Walter does not really mind-in his own family he has never been in a position that allowed him to instruct or teach or tease anybody younger than himself, and in a way it gives him pleasure.
It is certainly true, though, that in his own world, nobody would ever have got away with being so pert and forward and inquisitive as this Nettie. What does Walter’s family have for supper when they are at home, how do they sleep? Are there animals kept in the house? Do the sheep have names, and what are the sheepdogs’ names, and can you make pets of them? Why not? What is the arrangement of the scholars in the schoolroom, what do they write on, are the teachers cruel? What do some of his words mean that she does not understand, and do all the people where he is talk like him?