Mountain Blood Part 20

His resentment changed to anger; he moved to the foot of the bed, where, in his shirt sleeves, he harangued her:

"I want a cheerful wife, one with a song to her, and not a dam' female elder around the house. A good woman is a--a jewel, but when your goodness gives you a face ache it's ... it's something different, it's a nuisance.

I'd almost rather have a wife that wasn't so good but had some give to her." He sat down, clutching a heavy shoe which came off suddenly. Lettice was as immobile as the chest of drawers.

"G.o.ddy knows," he burst out again, "it's solemn enough around here anyhow with Sim Caley's old woman like a grave hole, and now you go and get it too.... Berry might put up with it, and Sim's just fool-hearted, but a regular man wouldn't abide it, he'd--he'd go to Paris, where the women are civilized and dance all night." He muttered an unintelligible period about French widows and pink.... "Buried before my time," he proclaimed. He stood with his head grizzled and harsh above an absurdly flowing nightshirt. In the deepening light Lettice's countenance seemed thinner than usual, her round, staring eyes were frightened, as though she had seen in the night the visible apparition of the curse of suffering laid upon all birth.

"You look like you've taken leave of your wits," he exclaimed in an acc.u.mulated exasperation; "say something." He leaned across the bed, and, grasping her elbow, shook her. She was as rigid, as unyielding, as the bed posts. Then with a long, slow shudder she turned and buried her head in the pillow.

XIV

Rutherford Berry and Effie, Barnwell K. and the delicate Rose, left after breakfast. Sim drove off behind the st.u.r.dy horse and Mrs. Caley was audibly energetic in the kitchen. When Gordon appeared on the porch Lettice was seated in the low rocker that had so often held Clare. She responded in a suppressed voice to her husband's salutation. "You went and spoiled Effie's whole visit," she informed him, "making Rutherford drunk."

"Why," he protested, "we never; he just got himself drunk."

"It was mean anyway--sitting drinking all night in the stable."

"You'll say I was drunk too next."

"It doesn't matter to you what I say, or what I go through with. I've stood more than I rightly ought, more than I'm going to--you must give me one thought in a day. You just act low. Father was self-headed, but he was never real trashy. He never got into fights at those common camp meetings."

"I threw the stone that hit Buck, didn't I! I busted his head open, didn't I! Oh, of course, I'm to blame for it all ... put it on me."

"Well, how did you get in it? how did you get mixed up with the school-teacher?"

"I got Mrs. Caley to thank for this, and I'll thank her." He hotly recited the obvious aspect of his connection at the camp meeting with Meta Beggs.

"It sounds all right as far as it goes," she retorted; "but I'll chance there's a good deal more; I'll chance you had it made up to meet her there. You would never have gone for any other reason; I don't believe you have been to a revival for twenty years. You had it made up between you.

And that Miss Beggs is too smart for you, she'll fool you all over the mountain. I don't like her either, and I don't want you to give her the satisfaction of making up to you. It's what she'd like--laughing at my back!"

"Miss Beggs never spoke any harm of you."

She made a gesture, hopeless, impatient, at his innocence. Her resentment burst out again, "Why does she want to speak to you--another woman's husband? Anybody knows it's low down. When did you see her? What did you talk about?"

"Of course when I see her coming I ought to go 'round by South Fork," he replied, heavily sarcastic.

"Well, you don't have to stand and talk like I warrant you do. There's something deep about her look."

"I've taken care of myself for some years, and I guess I can keep on."

"You can if you want to go to ruin, like you were when I married you, and you only had one shirt to your name."

"Throw it up to me. It's no wonder a man drinks here, he's got more to forget than to think about." He stepped from the porch, preparing to leave.

"Wait!" she commanded; "I'll put up with being left, and having you drink all night with the beasts, and fooling my money away, but," her voice rose and her eyes burned over dark shadows, "I won't put up with another woman, I won't put up with that thin thing making over my husband. I won't! I won't! do you understand that.... I--I can't."

He went around the corner of the house with her last words ringing in his ears, kicking angrily at the rough sod. His house, between Mrs. Caley's glum silence and Lettice's ceaseless complaining, was becoming uninhabitable. And, as Rutherford Berry had pointed out, the latter would only increase, sharpen, with the years. Lettice was a good wife, she was not like Nickles' old woman, worthless but the pleasantest body you'd meet in a day on a horse. She was not like Meta Beggs. He had never seen any other like the latter. Lettice had said that she would fool him all over the mountain ... but not him, not Gordon Makimmon, he thought complacently.

He was well versed in the ways of women; he would not go a step that he did not intend, understand. This business of Paris, for example: he might tell Meta Beggs that he'd go, and then, at--say, Norfolk, he would change his mind. Anyhow that was a plan worth considering. He recalled the school-teacher's level, penetrating gaze; she was as smart as Lettice had divined; he would have difficulty in fooling her. He felt obscurely that any step taken with her would prove irrevocable.

Lettice kept at him and at him; after the baby arrived it would be no better; there would be others; he regarded a succession of such periods, a succession of babies, with marked disfavor. He had been detached for so long from the restraints of commonplace, reputable relationships that they grew increasingly irksome, they chafed the old, established freedom of morals and action. Meta Beggs blew into fresh flame the embers of dying years. And yet, as he had told her by the stream, an involuntary la.s.situde, a new stiffness, had fallen upon his desire. Although his marriage was burdensome it was an accomplished fact; Lettice's wishes, her quality of steadfastness, exerted their influence upon him.

They operated now to increase his resentment; they formed an almost detached disapproval situated within his own breast, a criticism of his thoughts, his emotions, against which he vainly raged, setting himself pointedly in its defiance.

He lounged past the Courthouse, past Peterman's hotel, to the post-office.

It was a small frame structure, with the wing of the postmaster's residence extending from the back. At the right of the entrance was a small show window holding two watches with shut, chased silver lids, and a small pasteboard box lined with faded olive-colored plush containing two plated nut crackers and six picks. The postmaster was the local jeweller.

Within, beyond the window which gave access to the governmental activities a gla.s.s case rested on the counter. It was filled with an a.s.sortment of trinkets--rings with large, highly-colored stones, wedding bands, gold pins and bangles engraved with women's flowery names; and, laid by itself, a necklace of looped seed pearls.

The latter captured Gordon's attention, it was so pale, and yet, at the same time, so suggestive of elusive colors; it was so slender and graceful, so finished, that it irresistibly recalled the person of Meta Beggs.

"Let's see that string of pearls," he requested.

The postmaster laid it on top of the gla.s.s case. "The jobber sent it up by accident," he explained; "I can't see anything to it--for the price; it's too slimsy. I wouldn't advise it, Gord. Why, for thirty dollars, and that's what it costs--diamond clasp, you can get a string of fish skin pearls, experts can't tell 'em from original, as big as your finger end that would go twice about the neck and then hang some."

The necklace slipped coldly through Gordon Makimmon's hand; it reminded him of a small, pearly snake with a diamond head; it increasingly reminded him of Meta Beggs. She loved jewelry. If she had kissed him for a pair of silk stockings--

"I think I'll take it," he decided slowly; "I don't know if I've got her right here in my pants."

"Now, Gordon," the other heartily rea.s.sured him, "whenever you like. Of course it's a fine article--all strung on gold wire. I won't be surprised but Lettice'll think it's elegant. I often wondered why you didn't stop in lately and look over my stock; ladies put a lot on such little trifles."

Meta Beggs would have to wear it under her dress in Greenstream, he realized; perhaps she had better not wear it at all until she was out of the valley. He would clasp the pearls about that smooth, round throat....

The postmaster wrapped the pearls into a small, square package, talking voluminously. A new driver of the Stenton stage had lost a mail bag, he had lamed a horse--a satisfactory driver had not been discovered since Gordon ... left. He had heard of a law restraining the sale of patent medicines, of Snibbs' Mixture, and what the local drinkers would do, already deprived of the more legitimate forms of spirituous refreshment, was difficult to say. The postmaster predicted they would take to "dope."

Then there was to be a sap-boiling over on the western mountain, to-morrow night, at old man Entriken's.... Everybody had been invited; if the weather was ugly it would take place the first clear spell.

Sap-boilings, Gordon knew, held late in spring in the maple groves, lasted all night. Baskets of food were driven to the scene; the fires under the great, iron kettles were kept replenished; everybody stirred the bubbling sap, ate, gabbled; the young people even danced on the gra.s.s.

It was a romantic ceremonial: the unusual hours of its celebration, the mystery of night in close groves lit by the stars temporarily unsettled life from its prosaic, arduous journey toward the inevitable, blind termination. It moved the thoughts into unwonted fantasy, the heart to new, unguessed possibilities. For that night established values, life-long habits, negations, prudence, were set at naught.

Gordon wondered whether Meta Beggs would be there? He would like to be with her at a sap-boiling, in the sooty shadows. With the necklace of seed pearls in his pocket he walked over the street revolving in his mind the problem of asking her to accompany him. He could not hope to hide it from Lettice; and, to-day, he had recognized a note of finality in his wife's voice with regard to the school-teacher. If he went with Meta Beggs serious trouble would ensue in his home ... he wished to avoid any actual outbreak with Lettice. He remembered, tardily, her condition; it would be dangerous for her. He might, conceivably, at some time or another, go away; even to Paris--yet, at that latter thought, the wish, almost the necessity, of a return lingered at the back of his brain--but he would not goad her into an explosion of misery and temper. He acknowledged to himself, with a faint glow of pride, that he was not anxious to encounter Lettice Makimmon's full displeasure; she possessed the capability of tenacity, an iron-like resolve, inherited from old Pompey.

In the outcome his difficulty was unexpectedly solved for him--a large farm wagon, with boards temporarily laid from side to side, was to convey a quant.i.ty of people, and among them Meta Beggs, from the village to the sap-boiling. He learned this from the idlers before the _Bugle_ office.

Sitting with his chair canted against that dingy wooden facade he thought of the school-teacher and the coming night. It was late afternoon of the day on which he had bought the necklace. The small package still rested in his pocket. It had been his intention to give the pearls to Meta Beggs before he returned to his home, but no opportunity had offered. After school she had pa.s.sed the seated row of men, uneasily stirring their hats in response to her collected greeting; and, with Mrs. Peterman, gone into the body of the hotel. Gordon could not follow her. Anyhow, the presentation could be made with better effect in the obscurity of the maples to-morrow night ... her grat.i.tude could have fuller sweep.

He made his way finally, reluctantly, home. There, alone in the bedroom, he swiftly withdrew the necklace from its pasteboard box, and dropped it into the pocket of a coat hanging in the curtained wardrobe. It was, he noted, the checked suit with the red thread, the one he would wear to the sap-boiling. He heard approaching footsteps, and, hastily crumpling the paper and small box into a compact unit, he flung it into a corner of the wardrobe, behind a heap of linen.

XV

It was comparatively a short distance to the elder Entriken's farm, and, rather than invent a laborious explanation of the horse's absence all night, Gordon walked. Numberless excuses offered him plausible reason for his own delayed return home.--It was better to say nothing to Lettice of his actual intention; she was already suspicious of his sudden interest in local gatherings.

The road beyond Greenstream village crossed a brook and mounted by sharp turns the western range. The day had faded to amethyst, pale in the translucent vault of the sky, deepening in the valley; the plum-colored smoke of evening fires ascended in tenuous columns to an incredible height. He walked rapidly, with the oppressed heart that had lately grown familiar, the sense of imminence, the feeling of advancing into a vague, towering shadow. That last sensation was at once new and familiar--where before had he been conscious of a vast, indefinable peril, blacker than night, looming implacably before him? He summoned his old hardihood and advanced over the still, bosky side of the mountain.

He descended, beyond the ridge, into the fact of evening accomplished. At the base of the range he crossed a softly-swelling expanse of close-cropped gra.s.s, skirted a bog and troop of naked-seeming birches, and came in view of the maple grove toward which he was bound.