Poor White Part 14

One of the young women came out into the darkness accompanied by a man, evidently one of the guests. They had both been drinking and stood for a moment in the darkness with their bodies pressed together. "I wish it were our wedding night," the man's voice whispered, and the woman laughed. After a long kiss they went back into the kitchen.

A farm dog appeared and going up to Clara licked her hand. She went around the house and stood back of a bush in the darkness near where the carriages were being loaded. Her father with Steve Hunter and his wife came and got into a carriage. Tom was in an expansive, generous mood. "You know, Steve, I told you and several others my Clara was engaged to Alfred Buckley," he said. "Well, I was mistaken. The whole thing was a lie. The truth is I shot off my mouth without talking to Clara. I had seen them together and now and then Buckley used to come out here to the house in the evening, although he never came except when I was here. He told me Clara had promised to marry him, and like a fool I took his word. I never even asked. That's the kind of a fool I was and I was a bigger fool to go telling the story. All the time Clara and Hugh were engaged and I never suspected. They told me about it to-night."

Clara stood by the bush until she thought the last of the guests had gone.

The lie her father had told seemed only a part of the evening's vulgarity.

Near the kitchen door the waitresses, cooks and musicians were being loaded into the bus that had been driven out from the Bidwell House. She went into the dining-room. Sadness had taken the place of the anger in her, but when she saw Hugh the anger came back. Piles of dishes filled with food lay all about the room and the air was heavy with the smell of food. Hugh stood by a window looking out into the dark farmyard. He held his hat in his hand.

"You might put your hat away," she said sharply. "Have you forgotten you're married to me and that you now live here in this house?" She laughed nervously and walked to the kitchen door.

Her mind still clung to the past and to the days when she was a child and had spent so many hours in the big, silent kitchen. Something was about to happen that would take her past away--destroy it, and the thought frightened her. "I have not been very happy in this house but there have been certain moments, certain feelings I've had," she thought. Stepping through the doorway she stood for a moment in the kitchen with her back to the wall and with her eyes closed. Through her mind went a troop of figures, the stout determined figure of Kate Chanceller who had known how to love in silence; the wavering, hurrying figure of her mother; her father as a young man coming in after a long drive to warm his hands by the kitchen fire; a strong, hard-faced woman from town who had once worked for Tom as cook and who was reported to have been the mother of two illegitimate children; and the figures of her childhood fancy walking over the bridge toward her, clad in beautiful raiment.

Back of these figures were other figures, long forgotten but now sharply remembered--farm girls who had come to work by the day; tramps who had been fed at the kitchen door; young farm hands who suddenly disappeared from the routine of the farm's life and were never seen again, a young man with a red bandana handkerchief about his neck who had thrown her a kiss as she stood with her face pressed against a window.

Once a high school girl from town had come to spend the night with Clara.

After the evening meal the two girls walked into the kitchen and stood by a window, looking out. Something had happened within them. Moved by a common impulse they went outside and walked for a long way under the stars along the silent country roads. They came to a field where men were burning brush. Where there had been a forest there was now only a stump field and the figures of the men carrying armloads of the dry branches of trees and throwing them on the fire. The fire made a great splash of color in the gathering darkness and for some obscure reason both girls were deeply moved by the sight, sound, and perfume of the night. The figures of the men seemed to dance back and forth in the light. Instinctively Clara turned her face upward and looked at the stars. She was conscious of them and of their beauty and the wide sweeping beauty of night as she had never been before.

A wind began to sing in the trees of a distant forest, dimly seen far away across fields. The sound was soft and insistent and crept into her soul. In the gra.s.s at her feet insects sang an accompaniment to the soft, distant music.

How vividly Clara now remembered that night! It came sharply back as she stood with closed eyes in the farm kitchen and waited for the consummation of the adventure on which she had set out. With it came other memories.

"How many fleeting dreams and half visions of beauty I have had!" she thought.

Everything in life that she had thought might in some way lead toward beauty now seemed to Clara to lead to ugliness. "What a lot I've missed,"

she muttered, and opening her eyes went back into the dining-room and spoke to Hugh, still standing and staring out into the darkness.

"Come," she said sharply, and led the way up a stairway. The two went silently up the stairs, leaving the lights burning brightly in the rooms below. They came to a door leading to a bedroom, and Clara opened it. "It's time for a man and his wife to go to bed," she said in a low, husky voice.

Hugh followed her into the room. He walked to a chair by a window and sitting down, took off his shoes and sat holding them in his hand. He did not look at Clara but into the darkness outside the window. Clara let down her hair and began to unfasten her dress. She took off an outer dress and threw it over a chair. Then she went to a drawer and pulling it out looked for a night dress. She became angry and threw several garments on the floor. "d.a.m.n!" she said explosively, and went out of the room.

Hugh sprang to his feet. The wine he had drunk had not taken effect and Steve Hunter had been forced to go home disappointed. All the evening something stronger than wine had been gripping him. Now he knew what it was. All through the evening thoughts and desires had whirled through his brain. Now they were all gone. "I won't let her do it," he muttered, and running quickly to the door closed it softly. With the shoes still held in his hand he crawled through a window. He had expected to leap into the darkness, but by chance his stocking feet alighted on the roof of the farm kitchen that extended out from the rear of the house. He ran quickly down the roof and jumped, alighting in a clump of bushes that tore long scratches on his cheeks.

For five minutes Hugh ran toward the town of Bidwell, then turned, and climbing a fence, walked across a field. The shoes were still gripped tightly in his hand and the field was stony, but he did not notice and was unconscious of pain from his bruised feet or from the torn places on his cheeks. Standing in the field he heard Jim Priest drive homeward along the road.

"My bonny lies over the ocean, My bonny lies over the sea, My bonny lies over the ocean, O, bring back my bonny to me."

sang the farm hand.

Hugh walked across several fields, and when he came to a small stream, sat down on the bank and put on his shoes. "I've had my chance and missed it," he thought bitterly. Several times he repeated the words. "I've had my chance and I've missed," he said again as he stopped by a fence that separated the fields in which he had been walking. At the words he stopped and put his hand to his throat. A half-stifled sob broke from him. "I've had my chance and missed," he said again.

CHAPTER XIX

On the day after the feast managed by Tom and Jim, it was Tom who brought Hugh back to live with his wife. The older man had come to the farmhouse on the next morning bringing three women from town who were, as he explained to Clara, to clear away the mess left by the guests. The daughter had been deeply touched by what Hugh had done, and at the moment loved him deeply, but did not choose to let her father know how she felt. "I suppose you got him drunk, you and your friends," she said. "At any rate, he's not here."

Tom said nothing, but when Clara had told the story of Hugh's disappearance, drove quickly away. "He'll come to the shop," he thought and went there, leaving his horse tied to a post in front. At two o'clock his son-in-law came slowly over the Turner's Pike bridge and approached the shop. He was hatless and his clothes and hair were covered with dust, while in his eyes was the look of a hunted animal. Tom met him with a smile and asked no questions. "Come," he said, and taking Hugh by the arm led him to the buggy. As he untied the horse he stopped to light a cigar. "I'm going down to one of my lower farms. Clara thought you would like to go with me,"

he said blandly.

Tom drove to the McCoy house and stopped.

"You'd better clean up a little," he said without looking at Hugh. "You go in and shave and change your clothes. I'm going up-town. I got to go to a store."

Driving a short distance along the road, Tom stopped and shouted. "You might pack your grip and bring it along," he called. "You'll be needing your things. We won't be back here to-day."

The two men stayed together all that day, and in the evening Tom took Hugh to the farmhouse and stayed for the evening meal. "He was a little drunk,"

he explained to Clara. "Don't be hard on him. He was a little drunk."

For both Clara and Hugh that evening was the hardest of their lives. After the servants had gone, Clara sat under a lamp in the dining-room and pretended to read a book and in desperation Hugh also tried to read.

Again the time came to go upstairs to the bedroom, and again Clara led the way. She went to the door of the room from which Hugh had fled and opening it stepped aside. Then she put out her hand. "Good-night," she said, and going down a hallway went into another room and closed the door.

Hugh's experience with the school teacher was repeated on that second night in the farmhouse. He took off his shoes and prepared for bed. Then he crept out into the hallway and went softly to the door of Clara's room. Several times he made the journey along the carpeted hallway, and once his hand was on the k.n.o.b of the door, but each time he lost heart and returned to his own room. Although he did not know it Clara, like Rose McCoy on that other occasion, expected him to come to her, and knelt on the floor just inside the door, waiting, hoping for, and fearing the coming of the man.

Unlike the school teacher, Clara wanted to help Hugh. Marriage had perhaps given her that impulse, but she did not follow it, and when at last Hugh, shaken and ashamed, gave up the struggle with himself, she arose and went to her bed where she threw herself down and wept, as Hugh had wept standing in the darkness of the fields on the night before.

CHAPTER XX

It was a hot, dusty day, a week after Hugh's marriage to Clara, and Hugh was at work in his shop at Bidwell. How many days, weeks, and months he had already worked there, thinking in iron--twisted, turned, tortured to follow the twistings and turnings of his mind--standing all day by a bench beside other workmen--before him always the little piles of wheels, strips of unworked iron and steel, blocks of wood, the paraphernalia of the inventor's trade. Beside him, now that money had come to him, more and more workmen, men who had invented nothing, who were without distinction in the life of the community, who had married no rich man's daughter.

In the morning the other workmen, skillful fellows, who knew as Hugh had never known, the science of their iron craft, came straggling through the shop door into his presence. They were a little embarra.s.sed before him. The greatness of his name rang in their minds.

Many of the workmen were husbands, fathers of families. In the morning they left their houses gladly but nevertheless came somewhat reluctantly to the shop. As they came along the street, past other houses, they smoked a morning pipe. Groups were formed. Many legs straggled along the street.

At the door of the shop each man stopped. There was a sharp tapping sound.

Pipe bowls were knocked out against the door sill. Before he came into the shop, each man looked out across the open country that stretched away to the north.

For a week Hugh had been married to a woman who had not yet become his wife. She belonged, still belonged, to a world he had thought of as outside the possibilities of his life. Was she not young, strong, straight of body?

Did she not array herself in what seemed unbelievably beautiful clothes?

The clothes she wore were a symbol of herself. For him she was unattainable.

And yet she had consented to become his wife, had stood with him before a man who had said words about honor and obedience.

Then there had come the two terrible evenings--when he had gone back to the farmhouse with her to find the wedding feast set in their honor, and that other evening when old Tom had brought him to the farmhouse a defeated, frightened man who hoped the woman would put out her hand, would rea.s.sure him.

Hugh was sure he had missed the great opportunity of his life. He had married, but his marriage was not a marriage. He had got himself into a position from which there was no possibility of escaping. "I'm a coward,"

he thought, looking at the other workmen in the shop. They, like himself, were married men and lived in a house with a woman. At night they went boldly into the presence of the woman. He had not done that when the opportunity offered, and Clara could not come to him. He could understand that. His hands had builded a wall and the pa.s.sing days were huge stones put on top of the wall. What he had not done became every day a more and more impossible thing to do.

Tom, having taken Hugh back to Clara, was still concerned over the outcome of their adventure. Every day he came to the shop and in the evening came to see them at the farmhouse. He hovered about, was like a mother bird whose offspring had been prematurely pushed out of the nest. Every morning he came into the shop to talk with Hugh. He made jokes about married life.

Winking at a man standing nearby he put his hand familiarly on Hugh's shoulder. "Well, how does married life go? It seems to me you're a little pale," he said laughing.

In the evening he came to the farmhouse and sat talking of his affairs, of the progress and growth of the town and his part in it. Without hearing his words both Clara and Hugh sat in silence, pretending to listen, glad of his presence.

Hugh came to the shop at eight. On other mornings, all through that long week of waiting, Clara had driven him to his work, the two riding in silence down Medina Road and through the crowded streets of the town; but on that morning he had walked.

On Medina Road, near the bridge where he had once stood with Clara and where he had seen her hot with anger, something had happened, a trivial thing. A male bird pursued a female among the bushes beside the road. The two feathered, living creatures, vividly colored, alive with life, pitched and swooped through the air. They were like moving b.a.l.l.s of light going in and out of the dark green of foliage. There was in them a madness, a riot of life.

Hugh had been tricked into stopping by the roadside. A tangle of things that had filled his mind, the wheels, cogs, levers, all the intricate parts of the hay-loading machine, the things that lived in his mind until his hand had made them into facts, were blown away like dust. For a moment he watched the living riotous things and then, as though jerking himself back into a path from which his feet had wandered, hurried onward to the shop, looking as he went not into the branches of trees, but downward at the dust of the road.