Part Two - Home Life

"Where does she go?" thought Marise, and "What was that expression on
her face I could not name?"

Impulsively she went out quickly herself, and followed after the old
woman.

"Touclé! Touclé!" she called, and wondered if her voice in these days
sounded to everyone as nervous and uncertain as it did to her.

The old woman turned and waited till the younger had overtaken her. They
were under the dense shade of an old maple, beside the road, as they
stood looking at each other.

As she had followed, Marise regretted her impulse, and had wondered what
in the world she could find to say, but now that she saw again the
expression in the other's face, she cried out longingly, "Touclé, where
do you go that makes you look peaceful?"

The old woman glanced at her, a faint surprise appearing in her deeply
lined face. Then she looked at her, without surprise, seriously as
though to see what she might read in the younger woman's eyes. She stood
for a long moment, thinking. Finally she sat down on the grass under the
maple-tree, and motioned Marise to sit beside her. She meditated for a
long time, and then said, hesitatingly, "I don't know as a white person
could understand. White people . . . nobody ever asked me before."

She sat silent, her broad, dusty feet in their elastic-sided, worn,
run-over shoes straight before her, the thick, horny eyelids dropped
over her eyes, her scarred old face carved into innumerable deep lines.
Marise wondered if she had forgotten that anyone else was there. She
turned her own eyes away, finally, and looking at the mountains saw that
black thunderclouds were rolling up over the Eagle Rocks. Then the old
woman said, her eyes still dropped, "I tell you how my uncle told me,
seventy-five years ago. He said people are like fish in an underground
brook, in a black cave. He said there is a place, away far off from
where they live, where there is a crack in the rock. If they went 'way
off they could get a glimpse of what daylight is. And about once in so
often they need to swim there and look out at the daylight. If they
don't, they lose their eyesight from always being in the dark. He said
that a lot of Indians don't care whether they lose their eyesight or
not, so long's they can go on eating and swimming around. But good
Indians do. He said that as far as he could make out, none of the white
people care. He said maybe they've lost their eyes altogether."