Other Main-Travelled Roads Part 46

As they ate they furtively looked with great curiosity and admiration up at the dainty woman. Their eyes were bright and large, and gleamed out of the obscure brown of their dimly lighted faces with savage intensity--so it seemed to Mrs. Field, and she dropped her eyes before their glare.

Her husband and Ridgeley tried to enter into conversation with those sitting near. Ridgeley seemed on good terms with them all, and ventured a joke or word, at which they laughed with terrific energy, and fell as suddenly silent again.

As Mrs. Field looked up the second time she saw the dark, strange face of Williams a few places down, and opposite her. His eyes were fixed on her husband's hands with a singular intensity. Her eyes followed his, and the beauty of her husband's hands came to her again with new force.

They were perfectly shaped, supple, warm-colored, and strong. Their color and deftness stood out in vivid contrast to the heavy, brown, cracked, and calloused, paw-like hands of the workmen.

Why should Williams study her husband's hands? If he had looked at her she would not have been surprised. The other men she could read. They expressed either frank, simple admiration or furtive desire. But this man looked at her husband, and his eyes fell often upon his own hands, which trembled with fatigue. He handled his knife clumsily, and yet she could see he, too, had a fine hand--a slender, powerful hand, like that people call an artist hand--a craftsman-like hand.

He saw her looking at him, and he flashed one enigmatical glance into her eyes, and rose to go out.

"How you getting on, Williams?" Ridgeley asked.

Williams resented his question. "Oh, I'm all right," he said, sullenly.

The meal was all over in an incredibly short time. One by one, two by two, they rose heavily and lumbered out with one last, wistful look at Mrs. Field. She will never know how seraphic she seemed sitting there amid those rough surroundings--the dim, red light of the kerosene lamp falling across her clear pallor, out of which her dark eyes shone with liquid softness, made deeper and darker by her half-sorrowful tenderness for these homeless fellows.

An hour later, as they were standing at the door, just ready to take to their sleigh, they heard the sc.r.a.ping of a fiddle.

"Oh, some one is going to play!" Mrs. Field cried, with visions of the rollicking good times she had heard so much about, and of which she had seen nothing so far. "Can't I look in?"

Ridgeley was dubious. "I'll go and see," he said, and entered the door.

"Boys, Mrs. Field wants to look in a minute. Go on with your fiddling, Sam--only I wanted to see that you weren't sitting around in dishabill."

This seemed a good joke, and they all howled and haw-hawed gleefully.

"So go right ahead with your evening prayers. All but--you understand!"

"All right, captain," said Sam, the man with the fiddle.

When Mrs. Field looked in, two men were furiously grinding axes; several were sewing on ragged garments; all were smoking; some were dressing chapped or bruised fingers. The atmosphere was horrible. The socks and s.h.i.+rts were steaming above the huge stove; the smoke and stench for a moment were sickening, but Ridgeley pushed them just inside the door.

"It's better out of the draught."

Sam jigged away on the violin. The men kept time with the cranks of the grindstone, and all faces turned with bashful smiles and bold grins at Mrs. Field. Most of them shrank a little from her look, like shy animals.

Ridgeley threw open the window. "In the old days," he explained to Mrs.

Field, "we used a fireplace, and that kept the air better."

As her sense of smell became deadened the air seemed a little more tolerable to Mrs. Field.

"Oh, we must change all this," she said. "It is horrible."

"Play us a tune," said Sam, extending the violin to Field. He did not think Field could play. It was merely a shot in the dark on his part.

Field took it and looked at it and sounded it. On every side the men turned face in eager expectancy.

"He can play, that feller."

"I'll bet he can. He handles her as if he knew her."

"You bet your life. Tune up, Cap."

Williams came from the obscurity somewhere, and looked over the shoulders of the men.

"Down in front!" somebody called, and the men took seats on the benches, leaving Field standing with the violin in hand. He smiled around upon them in a frank, pleased way, quite ready to show his skill. He played _Annie Laurie_, and a storm of applause broke out.

"_Hoo-ray!_ Bully for you!"

"Sam, you're out of it!"

"Sam, your name is Mud!"

"Give us another, Cap!"

"It ain't the same fiddle!"

He played again some simple tune, and he played it with the touch which showed the skilled amateur. As he played, Mrs. Field noticed a growing restlessness on Williams' part. He moved about uneasily. He gnawed at his finger-nails. His eyes glowed with a singular fire. His hands drummed and fingered. At last he approached, and said, roughly:

"Let me take that fiddle a minute."

"Oh, cheese it, Williams!" the men cried. "Let the other man play."

"What do _you_ want to do with the fiddle--think it's a music-box?"

asked Sam, its owner.

"Go to h.e.l.l!" said Williams. As Field gave the violin over to him, his hands seemed to tremble with eagerness.

He raised his bow, and struck into an imposing, brilliant strain, and the men fell back in astonishment.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned!" gasped the owner of the violin.

"Keep quiet, Sam."

Mrs. Field looked at her husband. "Why, Ed, he is playing _Sarasate_!"

"That's what he is," he returned, slangily, too much astonished to do more than gaze. Williams played on.

There was a faint defect in the high notes, as if his fingers did not touch the strings properly, but his bow action showed cultivation and breadth of feeling. As he struck into one of those difficult octave-leaping movements his face became savage. On the E string a squeal broke forth; he flung the violin into Sam's lap with a ferocious curse, and then, extending his hands, hard, crooked to fit the axe-helve, calloused and chapped, he said to Field:

"Look at my hands! Lovely things to play with, aren't they?"

His voice trembled with pa.s.sion. He turned and went outside. As he pa.s.sed Mrs. Field his head was bowed, and he was uttering a groaning cry like one suffering physical pain.

"That's what drink does for a man," Ridgeley said, as they watched Williams disappear down the swampers' trail.

"That man has been a violinist," said Field. "What's he doing up here?"

"Came to get away from himself, I guess," Ridgeley replied.