Stubble Part 25

He was groping for her hand.

"I don't know," she said again. "I can't think. Can't we let things run on as they are?" She ventured a look at him, appealingly.

He drew away just a little and she could see a grim little line gathering about his mouth and a frown about his eyes.

"I don't see any use in waiting to make up your mind. That's not the way _I_ do business. What is it?" He went on quietly and firmly, "Yes or no?" and then more gently, "I think you can see I am willing to do things for you. It hasn't been one-sided, has it?"

His words crystallized the turbulence in her mind. She was suddenly sure of herself. She looked up quickly. She could see the little folds of flesh about his collar, the fine little purplish lines in his cheeks, could hear his thick breathing, and yet his eyes were looking steadily and gravely into hers.

"You're right," she said. "There's no use waiting. I'm sorry. I can't."

Something faded from his face. He looked at her fixedly for a moment and then rose to his feet. "I wonder if you've fooled yourself as thoroughly as you have me," he said.

She made no reply, though she cringed slightly at the inference, and sat there watching him.

He lifted his shoulders and let them sink heavily, and then he cast a look about the deserted lobby. Then he turned to her again and imperceptibly inclined his head. He did not offer his hand.

"Good-bye," he said.

"Good-bye," she echoed, her lips barely moving.

She watched his broad, stolid back move slowly across the room, saw him pause for a moment at the door and then plunge resolutely through it, and then she was alone. Not a sound came to her ears. The desk by the switchboard was deserted. A bracket lamp on the wall opposite was crooked; one of the crystal pendants beneath it was broken short off.

Someone had dropped a burnt match on the floor in front of the desk and it lay there in mute sacrilege. All at once the silence seemed fraught with a tumult of hateful suggestions, and, without ringing for the elevator, she sprang to her feet, rushed for the steps, and fled up to her room.

She switched on the light and stood for a moment by the table fingering an ivory paper cutter. Then she went to the window and peered out. Not a sound came to her, not a single, friendly sound.

Below her the leafy branches stretched out, inert, indifferent; and below them, darkness.

"And this is the man," she thought, "from whom I have borrowed all that money."

PART III

BLOOMFIELD

CHAPTER XVII

Fate smiled. An itinerant Swiss became interested in the tea room.

There were a few days of sharp bargaining and on October the fourteenth it was sold to him. The price just barely covered the indebtedness. Mary Louise made haste to send Claybrook a check for the fifteen hundred dollars plus the interest. Two days later she got the notes through the mail with no comment and she tremblingly tore them into bits and scattered the bits from her window. Then she went to the bank and took up the note for the six hundred dollars she had originally borrowed. It left her nothing, but she was free. She had lived the summer and was where she had started. A little wan, feeling a little empty, she caught the train for Bloomfield. All during the trip she gazed from the window, dizzily conscious of the shifting landscape, dimly aware of her retreat....

Miss Susan McCallum looked up from her rocking chair as Mary Louise entered the sitting room. There was no surprise in her greeting, and she suffered her cheek to be kissed in silence. Old Landy stuck his grizzled head in at the door at the unusual commotion and Mary Louise, unaccountably and suddenly touched by something subtly familiar and friendly, trilled:

"I've come to look after you, Aunt Susie. Just couldn't stay away any longer. The countryside was perfectly beautiful as I came up this morning in the train. It's the loveliest October I've ever seen. Think of being cooped up in the city this time of year."

Landy grinned and came shambling in with a greeting. Miss Susie's eyebrows went up and there was a suspicion of moisture on the lashes.

"Well, you needn't have done it. Landy and I have been managing very well. But _you_ look a little peaked." She turned and laid her knitting on the table by her side.

"Little Missy's a sight fo' so' eyes," interjected Landy and then withdrew. Directly they could hear him authoritatively ordering someone about.

Miss Susie sighed and looked at Mary Louise. The latter was taking off her hat but she caught a hidden appeal in the pinched, weazened face that she had never before noticed. It made a sharp little tug at her heart, and throwing her hat on the table, she came over and sat on the stool at the older woman's feet.

"How long will you be with us this time?"

She reached up and took the hand and was startled at finding how hot it was. "Why--for all the time. Didn't you understand? I'm not going back at all."

A strange expression came over Miss Susie's face. It was as though she all of a sudden let down. She stared into Mary Louise's eyes and the latter waited for some characteristic outburst. But none came.

Directly the old lady reached over for her knitting again and busied herself with it, bending her head over it. Mary Louise, watching her, saw her throat contract, saw her moisten her lips softly with the tip of her tongue.

Without, looking up, "What about your business? You're not leaving it for someone else to look after for you?" The tone was very low and the voice so husky that she finished the sentence with a little clearing of the throat.

"I've given it up--given it up entirely. Not a thing in the world to keep me," replied Mary Louise.

For a few moments complete silence settled down upon the room, with only the ticking of the clock on the mantel. It was dark and cool and sweet-smelling, a sort of "goodsy" smell. A blue-bottle fly began to buzz and b.u.mp against the gla.s.s of the window and now and then he would circle about the room, filling its silence with his droning. The sunlight came creeping slowly across the rag carpet, a widening orange pool, as the sun slipped around to the westward. Mary Louise could see the edge of it without turning her head. She felt suddenly guilty, as though she were in some way parading in false colours. There was an impenetrableness in the reserve.

"I just couldn't stand it any longer," she burst out. "I want to be with my people and stay with my people, and look after you and live my life as it was intended." Somehow it was not exactly what she wanted to say, not the whole truth, but as if in explanation she began to stroke her aunt's knee very softly.

"What do you plan to do?" Miss Susie looked up again and there was the same old look of withered sharpness. "There's nothing in Bloomfield, you know."

"Oh, I know. Nothing, if you mean opportunity. But everything in the way of living. We'll just rock along. I'll find something to do.

Something to keep me out of mischief," she laughed. "Mr. Orpell ought to have somebody in his drug store. His soft-drink counter is atrocious. Then I can make preserves and sell 'em. I know where I can sell a lot--in the city. I just don't want to think--just rest a bit and let this blessed peace get a good hold of me again." Her voice rose sharp and eager and Miss Susie smiled a quizzical smile and the old order was again restored. A door slammed and Landy's voice came to them, this time in a wailing gospel hymn, and Mary Louise sprang to her feet. "I'll have to go get Zeke Thompson and have him fetch my trunk. There was n.o.body to bring it over from Guests and I didn't want to wait to hunt for someone."

She skipped over to the table and picked up her hat again. Already she felt better--warmed and comforted. She paused for a moment, standing in front of Miss Susie, looking down at her as she sat there knitting placidly away with the fine firm lines about her mouth. "You won't mind if I go with him, will you? There's an excess baggage charge that I can't trust Zeke with, and I'll not be long."

"No, of course not. Since when have I been that I couldn't be left alone?" But she smiled and Mary Louise, rushing to her, kissed her again, rapturously upon the cheek, turned and whirled toward the door where she paused for a wave of the hand before plunging forth on her errand.

The sound of the door closing behind her sobered her for a moment.

Here she was, gone again. Would she never be content to settle down?

But the wine of the autumnal weather came mounting to her head and as she opened the front gate and struck out up the street she raised her face, drinking it in.

The rows of maples had been touched by the frost and were flaming scarlet and crimson. Over beyond, across the street, between the houses where a pasture land stretched down to the creek, the beeches were golden and rustling and shimmering in the mellow sunlight. There was a delicious tang in the air one moment and a soft mellow touch of indolent fruition the next. An automobile went scuttling across Main Street at the intersection, seeking its way westward, leaving a cloud of dust that hung lazily golden ere it settled. Even the dust was fragrant. The old tavern was quite deserted; the same green shutter hung by one hinge, and as she pa.s.sed the town hall or meeting house she could hear the click of a typewriter through an open window, an incongruous touch of modernity in an otherwise immaculate antique setting. The sun was warm and came filtering through the shade to splotch the uneven brick pavement, bringing out its homely roughness in minute detail. She felt as if she recognized each upturned brick, and the worn patch of yellow earth where a gra.s.s plot was meant to be, up to the edge of the gnarled root of the oak stump that had been struck by lightning, was just as it had always been. She and Joe Hooper had played marbles there until he had grown too big to be playing marbles with girls. Queer little ecstatic sensations they were.

She crossed the square. A solitary man was walking on the other side of the street, away from her. He was carrying three long poles over his shoulder and he walked stiffly and with a slight limp. He wore a suit of dusty blue "unionalls" and a battered felt hat. Curious that she should notice such things. A "Ford" backed away from the curbing, wheeled and went rattling around the corner down the road toward Guests. And then the street and the square and the whole town were quiet again, as deserted as a street or a town on canvas.

She walked swiftly, but not too swiftly to catch up every sign of home. Her mind was aflood with impressions. What a narrow escape she had had. An exultant thought like a song arose in her. She had ventured forth, had had her taste, and it had cost her nothing. The city had not caught her even though it had reached forth strong, prehensile fingers. She knew now what she wanted, had the strength, the zest. And it was October and fair, and smiling.

Suddenly she ran almost headlong into Mrs. Mosby. That good lady came precipitately out of Orpell's Drug Store, and she was wearing her white ruching and her bangles and a trim little widow's bonnet with a semi-circle of black veil hanging down behind and accentuating the prim whiteness of her face.

Mrs. Mosby's was not a face to betray emotion; it was a well-behaved, studiously composed face. And her voice was level as she took Mary Louise by both hands.

"Well, my dear," she said. "What brings you here? I've heard you're an awfully busy woman. Hope there's nothing wrong at home."

"No," replied Mary Louise. Somehow she could never get it out of her head whenever she spoke to Mrs. Mosby that it was not still as a little girl to a personage--a personage to whom restraint and deference were due. "I'm not so busy as all that."