The Happy End Part 6

He broke off at the thought of Flavilla, still in bed, her head, if anything, hotter than last night. Lemuel Doret wished again that he had not allowed Bella to call their child by that unsanctified name.

Before the birth they had seen a vaudeville, and Bella, fascinated by a golden-and-white creature playing a white accordion that bore her name in ornamental letters, had insisted on calling her daughter, too, Flavilla. In spite of the hymn, dejection fastened on him as he remembered this and a great deal more about his wife.

If she could only be brought to see the light their marriage and life might still be crowned with triumph. But Bella, pointing out the resulting poverty of his own conviction and struggle, said freely that she had no confidence in promises; she demanded fulfillment now. She regarded him as more than a little affected in the brain. Yet there had been no deep change in him--from the very first he had felt a growing uneasiness at the spectacle of the world and the flesh. The throb of the Salvation Army drum at the end of an alley, the echo of the fervent exhortations and holy songs, had always filled him with a surging emotion like homesickness.

Two impulses, he recognized, held a relentless warfare within him; he pictured them as Christ and Satan; but the first would overthrow all else. "Glory!" he cried mechanically aloud. He put down the hairbrush and inspected the razors on their shelf. The bright morning light flashed along the rubbed fine blades; they were beautiful, flawless, without a trace of defilement. He felt the satin smoothness of the steel with an actual thrill of pleasure; his eyes narrowed until they were like the glittering points of knives; he held the razor firmly and easily, with a sinewy poised wrist.

Finally, his suspenders in position over a collarless striped s.h.i.+rt, he moved out to the bare sharp descent before his house and poured water onto the roots of a struggling lilac bush. Its leaves were now coated with dust; but the week before it had borne an actual cl.u.s.ter of scented blossom; and he was still in the wonder of the lavender fragrance on the meager starved stem.

The beat of hoofs approached, and he turned, seeing Doctor Frazee in his yellow cart.

"Oh, doctor!" he called instinctively.

The other stopped, a man with a lean face, heavy curved nose and penetrating gaze behind large spectacles. He was in reality a veterinary, but Lemuel Doret, out of a profound caution, had discovered him to be above the narrow scope of local prejudice.

"I wish you'd look at Flavilla," Doret continued.

The doctor hesitated, and then turned shortly in at the sidewalk.

"It will hurt no one if I do that." Above Flavilla's flushed face, a tentative finger on her wrist, Frazee's expression grew serious. "I'll tell you this," he a.s.serted; "she's sick. You had better call Markley to-day. And until he comes don't give her any solids. You can see she's in a fever."

"Can't you tend her? I'd put more on you than any fresh young hospital stiff."

"Certainly not," he responded.

When the latter had gone Lemuel Doret found his wife in the kitchen. She wore a pale-blue wrapper with a soiled sc.r.a.p of coa.r.s.e lace at her full throat, her hair was gathered into a disorderly knot, and already there was a dab of paint on either cheek. She had been pretty when he married her, pretty and full of an engaging sparkle, a ready wit; but the charm had gone, the wit had hardened into a habit of sarcasm. They had been married twelve years, and in itself, everything considered, that was remarkable and held a great deal in her favor. She had been faithful. It was only lately, in Nantbrook, that her dissatisfaction had materialized in vague restless hints.

"Frazee says Flavilla is sick," he told her. "He thinks we ought to get Markley."

She made a gesture of skepticism. "All those doctors send you to each other," she proclaimed. "Like as not he'll get half for doing it."

"She don't look right."

Bella's voice and att.i.tude grew exasperated. "Of course you know all about children; you've been where you could study on them. And of course I have no sense; a woman's not the person to say when her child is sick or well. Have a doctor if you can pay one, and buy a lot of medicine too. There's some calomel upstairs, but that's no good. I'd like to know where you have all the money! G.o.d knows I need a little, to put inside me and out."

"It's right scarce," he admitted, resolutely ignoring her tone. "Perhaps Flavilla will be better later in the day; I'll wait."

He spoke without conviction, denying the impulse to have her cared for at once, in an effort to content and still Bella. However, he failed in both of these aims. Her voice swept into a shrill complaint and abuse of Nantbrook--a place, she a.s.serted, of one dead street, without even a pa.s.sing trolley car to watch. She had no intention of being buried here for the rest of her life. Turning to a cigarette and yesterday's paper she drooped into a sulky shape of fat and slovenly blue wrapper beside the neglected dishes of their insufficient breakfast.

He went through the empty house to the front again, where at least the sun was warm and bright. The air held a faint dry fragrance that came from the haymaking of the deep country in which Nantbrook lay. Lemuel Doret could see the hotel at a crossing on the left, a small gray block of stone with a flat portico, a heavy gilt beer sign and whitewashed sheds beyond. The barkeeper stood at a door, a huge girth circled by a soiled ap.r.o.n; nearer a bundle of brooms and glittering stacked paint cans marked the local store. It was, he was forced to admit, far from gay; but he found a great contentment in the sunny peace, in the limitless s.p.a.ce of the unenclosed sky; the air, the fields, the birds in the trees were free.

As he stood frowning in thought he saw the figure of a strange man walking over the road; Lemuel knew that he was strange by the formality of the clothes. He wore a hard straw hat, collar and diamond-pinned tie, and a suit with a waistcoat. At first Doret's interest was perfunctory, but as the other drew nearer his inspection changed to a painful absorption. Suddenly his att.i.tude grew tense; he had the appearance of a man gazing at an enthralling but dangerous spectacle, such--for example--as a wall that might topple over, crus.h.i.+ng anything human within its sweep.

The object of this scrutiny had a pale countenance with a carefully clipped mustache, baggy eyes and a blue-shaved heavy jaw. An indefinable suggestion of haste sat on a progress not unduly hurried. But as he caught sight of Lemuel Doret he walked more and more slowly, returning his fixed attention. When the two men were opposite each other, only a few feet apart, he almost stopped. For a moment their sharpened visions met, parried, and then the stranger moved on. He made a few steps, hesitated, then directly returned.

"Come inside," he said in a slightly hoa.r.s.e voice.

"It suits me here," Doret replied.

The other regarded him steadily. "I've made no mistake," he a.s.serted. "I could almost say how long you were up for, and a few other little things too. I don't know what you're doing in this dump, but here we both are."

He waited for nothing more, ascending quickly to the hall. The two made their way into the improvised barber shop.

"You've got me wrong," Doret still insisted.

"Who is it, Lem?" Bella demanded at the door.

As she spoke an expression of geniality overspread her face, daubed with paint and discontent.

"Why, I'll tell you--I'm June Bowman."

"That don't mean anything to us," Lemuel continued. "The best thing you can do is keep right on going."

"Not that Fourth Ward stew?" Bella asked eagerly.

He nodded.

"Lem's kind of died on his feet," she explained in a palpable excuse of her husband's ignorance; "he don't read the papers nor nothing. But of course I've heard of you, Mr. Bowman. We're glad to see you."

"Keep right along," Lemuel Doret repeated. His face was dark and his mouth hardly more than a pinched line.

"Now, who are you?" Bowman inquired.

"I'll tell you," Bella put in, "since his manners have gone with everything else. This is Snow Doret. If you know the live men that name will be familiar to you."

"I seem to remember it," he admitted.

"If Snow went in the city it's Lemuel here," Doret told him. His anger seethed like a kettle beginning to boil.

"Well, if Snow ever went I guess I'm in right. The truth is I got to lay off for a little, and this seems first-rate. I can explain it in a couple of words: Things went bad----"

"Wasn't it the election?" Bella asked politely.

"In a way," he answered with a bow. "You're all right. A certain party, you see, was making some funny cracks--a reform dope; and he got in other certain parties' light, see? Word was sent round, and when a friend and me come on him some talk was pa.s.sed and this public nuisance got something. It was all regular and paid for----"

"I read about it," Bella interrupted. "He died in the ambulance."

"Then I was slipped the news that they were going to elect me the pretty boy, and I had to make a break. Only temporary, till things are fixed.

Thus you see me scattered with hayseed. I was walking through for a lift to Lancaster, where there are some good fellows; but when I saw Snow here taking the air I knew there was one nearer."

"Lemuel; and I'm no good fellow."

"That's the truth," his wife added thinly. "Here is the only one in this house." She touched her abundant self.

"Then I can put up?"

"No," Lemuel Doret told him. "This is a house of G.o.d's."

Bella laughed in a rising hysterical key.