Cimarron · Chapter 3 (2/2)

Suddenly, as she waited there in the peace of the old building, there swept over Sabra a great wave of nostalgia for the very scenes she was leaving. It was as though she already had put behind her these familiar things of her girlhood: the calico pony and the little yellow phaeton; the oblong of Kansas sunshine and sky and garden seen through the Mission doorway; the scents and sounds and security of the solid stone building itself. She was shaken by terror. Indian Territory! Indian⁠—why, she couldn’t go there to live. To live forever, the rest of her life. Yancey Cravat, her husband, became suddenly remote, a stranger, terrible. She was Sabra Venable, Sabra Venable, here, safe from harm, in the Mission school. She wouldn’t go. Her mother was right.

A door at the end of the corridor opened. The huge figure of Mother Bridget appeared, filling the oblong, blotting out the sunlight. In her arms was a thick roll of cloth. “Here,” she said, and turned to let the light fall on it. It was a blanket or coverlet woven in a block pattern of white and a deep, brilliant blue. “It’s to keep you and little Cim warm, in the wagon, on the way to the Indian Territory. I wove it myself, on a hand loom. There’s no wear-out to it. The blue is Indian dye, and nothing can fade it. It’s a wild country you’ll be going to. But there’s something in the blue of this makes any room fit to live in, no matter how bare and ugly. If they ask you out there what it is, tell ’em a Kansas tapestry.”

She walked with Sabra to the phaeton and produced from a capacious pocket hidden in the folds of her habit a little scarlet June apple for the pony. Sabra kissed her on both plump cheeks quickly and stepped into the buggy, placing the blue and white blanket on the seat beside her. Her face was screwed up comically⁠—the face of a little girl who is pretending not to be crying. “Goodbye,” she said, and was surprised to find that her voice was no more than a whisper. And at that, feeling very sorry for herself, she began to cry, openly, even as she matter-of-factly gathered up the reins in her strong young fingers.

Mother Bridget stepped close to the wheel. “It’ll be all right. There’s no such thing as a new country for the people who come to it. They bring along their own ways and their own bits of things and make it like the old as fast as they can.”

“I’m taking along my china dishes,” breathed Sabra through her tears, “and my lovely linen and the mantel set that Cousin Dabney gave me for a wedding present, and my own rocker to sit in, and my wine-color silk-warp henrietta, and some slips from the garden, because Yancey says there isn’t much growing.”

Behind her spectacles the eyes of the wise old nun were soft with pity. “That’ll be lovely.” She watched the calico pony and the phaeton drive off up the dusty Kansas road. She turned toward the Mission house. The beads clicked. Hail, Mary, full of grace⁠ ⁠…