Stubble Part 29

"Mrs. Mosby in?" she asked.

The old woman ducked her head and held open the door. "I see." And then she waddled off. Half-way down the dim hallway she turned, paused a moment, and then came back. She went to a tall door, on the left side of the hall, and pushed it open, casting up a furtive eye at Mary Louise as she did so. A wave of clammy air rushed forth and there was a faint crackling as of dried leaves back in the darkness. "Won' you set down?" said the old woman.

Mary Louise realized how early she had come; she had quite disturbed the usual order of things. "No, thank you," she said. "I'll just wait here in the hall."

The woman waddled away again and disappeared through a back door which wheezed shut with a sort of sucking noise, and the hall was left in hushed silence. Mary Louise gazed up at the ceiling, then at the stairway reaching far back and into the depths of upstairs hall. Even in the soft light the place looked like a barn. It seemed to be watching her sullenly as a small child watches an intruder. Odd little crackings sounded in far corners, and a whispering, starting somewhere in that upstairs hall, came slinking down the wainscoting, across the hall carpet, and out beneath the front door. She wondered what might be going on back in those silent, unexplored depths.

Then the door opened again and Mrs. Mosby came swishing forth, like an echo of the whisper that had preceded her. She was wearing the same ruching, the same bangles, the same everything--minus the bonnet with the veil--that she had worn that previous afternoon. There was an opaque flatness in her eyes.

Mary Louise rose to her feet. She was embarra.s.sed as she met the older woman's quiet gaze, but she quickly threw off the feeling.

"I just heard some indefinite but disturbing news about an accident last night," she said anxiously.

Mrs. Mosby smiled a ghostly little smile and inclined her head. "We had quite a time," she admitted. "Won't you sit down? Or won't you come in the parlour?"

"No. I've not long to stay. I--I felt so worried. I wanted to come first thing and find out, see if there was anything I could do." They sat down at opposite ends of the horsehair sofa, each reflectively watching the other.

Mrs. Mosby shook her head. "He's getting on as nicely as could be expected. Fortunately, Dr. Withers was got hold of right away, last night." She was gazing dreamily at Mary Louise as though the latter were a creature of another world come vaguely intruding.

There was a curious atmosphere of restraint. Mary Louise sat waiting for the other woman to speak, her hands in her lap, her fingers slowly weaving in and out. After a momentary silence she asked in a politely casual tone, "What really did happen, Mrs. Mosby? Was he much hurt?"

Mrs. Mosby continued staring for an instant before she replied: "It really was the strangest thing. You know I did not even know that Joseph was in this part of the country. And at ten o'clock last night they came carrying him in. Of course, I was terribly excited and upset, and I did not find out the particulars exactly." She paused and took a delicate little shuddering breath. "You see, Mr. Burrus'

warehouse--the one down by the creek, you know? Well, something happened--the bank on which it stood caved in, in some way, and the rear wall collapsed, and from all I can understand there was quite a wreck, quite a lot of damage, for he had it crammed full of winter goods." She paused and looked intently at Mary Louise with eyes that were visualizing the events of the night before. "Well, to continue.

It seems that someone with a lantern, investigating the place around the back, ran across poor Joseph lying in the creek in the water, with one leg doubled up under him. He told the man he had fallen off the bridge. That was all he said. Just what he could have been doing there at such a time I cannot imagine. It seems that he had been working with a road-construction company about three miles out on the road to Guests. I found that out from a perfect stranger." She paused again and the line of her mouth took on a grimmer straightness. "One of the men, who brought him in--a great rough boor he was--had the audacity to suggest that Joseph was around there seeing what he could pick up.

I silenced him quickly enough. But can you imagine what brought him to such a place at such a time?"

Mary Louise drew herself together in an odd little shiver. "Some strange things can happen by coincidence, Mrs. Mosby. Was he badly hurt?"

"Fractured his left leg just below the knee, Dr. Withers says--poor Joseph! He's been an ambitious boy. So anxious to get ahead, and so self-sufficient. I feel right guilty about Joseph." She shook her head dolorously.

"But there's no real danger, is there?" broke in Mary Louise, her heart momentarily sinking.

"No. I suppose not. He is terribly run down. Like a ghost he looked when they carried him in last night, his eyes staring out before him all dumb and suffering. He must have been in that ice-cold water almost an hour before they found him. I might have been doing things for him all this time--looking after him--but you know how things have been in this house."

The cold wall of her reserve seemed to be gradually letting down.

Never before had she ever so much as alluded to the break in her family's fortunes. Mary Louise felt an odd, lifting feeling of hope--tremulous but dawning hope.

"Mrs. Mosby," she said. "Excuse me for speaking about something that is not my affair, but"--she hesitated and gazed at the polished marble slab of the hall tree--"it's only because I've known Joe so well, for such a long time"--the polished slab was gleaming faintly from an errant ray of sunshine that came through a dim, high-set hall window--"that I perhaps know a little more about him." She paused after this introduction, and having thus committed herself, plunged in. "Why don't you give Joe the chance he really wants? You have a lot of land here that is not being developed at all. Give Joe the chance to work it out--some of it, at least, on shares." She paused, breathless, and looked up timidly to see how her presumption fared.

A slow, fatuous smile spread over Mrs. Mosby's face. Mary Louise watched it break--watched it play for a moment about her lips like a shaft of winter sunshine. Then she spoke, shaking her head in reminiscence:

"I'd thought of that, myself. In fact, I'd spoken of it to Joseph. But he had other ideas. Many's the time I would have welcomed having someone who really cared, on whom I could depend. It's been a difficult time for me, my dear. Brother's so feeble. I couldn't call on him. No. Joseph doesn't care for farming. You're mistaken there.

He's got an errant streak in him, like his father, I'm afraid." She sighed, and the sibilance of it echoed with a strange lingering note between those high gray walls. "Besides--though I've not let it be generally known--I've sold the place--to a Mr. Walcott of New York.

He's very wealthy, I believe. He's taking it over the first of the year. I'm just not strong enough to hold on any longer."

Mary Louise did not look up. The sunlight on the marble slab of the hall tree faded slowly away.

"Don't you want to go up and see him, my dear?" Mrs. Mosby said at length.

She started. "No," she replied. "I must be getting on. I've so many things to do. Some other time, may I? Perhaps this afternoon." She rose to her feet and walked slowly to the door. She opened it and walked through, out on to the wide front porch, her thoughts in a turmoil. Rising above everything was an inexplicable conviction that Joe was closely akin to herself; in all the confusion of the world's ways, a kindred creature.

She turned. Mrs. Mosby was standing in the open doorway watching her, on her face a set, wistful smile, that was as hard as stone. They exchanged good-byes and then the door slowly closed with its soft sucking noise and she found herself in the graying light of a gathering storm....

It was not until late the following afternoon that she found time again to visit the Mosby home.

The same old Negro woman admitted her and she stepped into the hall and stood waiting. Back in the shadow, in an open doorway, Mrs. Mosby and a stout, thickset man with stubbly black hair were talking in low tones. The Negro woman hurried past them back into the pa.s.sage, and they moved aside a little as she pa.s.sed. The last words of the conversation came faintly to Mary Louise's ears; the stout man was talking:

"Must build him up," he was saying. "Keep the windows open, give him plenty to eat, all he wants." Then Mrs. Mosby's sibilant but inaudible reply. And then again, "He's used himself up. No reserve. Not prepared for an emergency like this."

She sat dumbly wondering; it was most probably Dr. Withers, the new doctor. The monotonous hum of their voices suddenly ceased and he was walking past her toward the door, pursing his lips in an odd sort of way. He looked at her as he pa.s.sed, and reached for his hat. She did not hear the door close after him. Mrs. Mosby was speaking to her with a slight frown on her face.

"Just go on up, my dear. Ell bedroom, on the left. I'll be up directly."

She climbed the stairs in a maze. The silence was the most noticeable thing about the place unless it was the clinging, indescribable odour.

She found the door without difficulty and softly pushed it open. A draught of chill air greeted her, and there was a dim glow on the carpet from an open-grate fire in the wall opposite. Behind the door stood the bed, with its head against the wall, and in the bed lay Joe.

For a moment she could not realize it was he, the light was so dim, the figure so indistinct, so swathed in its covers. He turned his head at the sound of her footsteps and looked at her.

"Hullo," he said weakly.

All her reserves collapsed within her and she came and sat on the edge of the bed. She looked down into his face and could not speak; a change which she could not begin to detail had come over him. He smiled, "Was wondering about you to-day," he said.

She reached out and took his hand. It was very hot. Two bright spots burned in his cheeks and his eyes had that peculiar, hollow, sunken look she had seen once or twice before. Two days had pa.s.sed. The realization that it was but two days shocked her.

"Funny," he was saying. "That night--you remember--I met old Burrus coming out of your house. I wondered then what he could be doing.

Well--he was just on my trail. Fact."

"Yes," she said. "He brought Aunt Susie a hot-water bottle. But you mustn't talk too much, Joe." She squeezed his hand very softly.

"Well," he went on, as though intensely interested in the idea, "you know what he was for Uncle Buzz? Well, next he must put his jinx on me." He chuckled softly. "His kind always have it in for--my kind. It is funny. As I went down the road, after leaving your house, you remember?"

She nodded.

"Well, I soon saw from the road that something had happened. I went down across the field up to the fence. Things were scattered all over the ground, and some of 'em floating down the creek--I could see in the moonlight. 'Serves you right, you old skinflint,' I said to myself. 'But it's none of your business.' So I turned about and went back to the road. Couldn't help feeling kinda glad about it." He paused and drew a deep, painful breath. "I guess it's all just retribution. Shouldn't have enjoyed a man's misfortune. I missed the edge of the road, slipped, and fell across the big eight by eight that ties the bridge to the bank, and that's all I remember. Old Burrus pulled me out of the creek himself."

He withdrew his hand and moved slightly in the bed, as if easing himself somewhere. "It _was_ funny, wasn't it?"

She gazed into his face. Something was stirring within her over which she seemed to have no control--a tenderness, a mothering instinct, a vast hurt deep within herself. She suddenly realized that she could have had him, although he had not offered himself. Nor had he ever asked for anything, probably never would. The realization singularly made him seem all the more her own. "You mustn't work yourself up, Joe. Be quiet. I want you to get well." Just how fervently she wished it, and with what anxiety, she suddenly knew. The sight of his peaked, upturned face, staring at the ceiling, with the bright red spots on his cheeks, was more than she could bear, and she rose to her feet and walked over to the open window.

The sun was just sinking behind a broken bank of heavy, blue-gray clouds. On the inner surfaces through which streamed its last rays patches of blood-red lining showed. A lurid glow was thinly suffused over the stretch of land between, against which were outlined the gray top branches of trees, moving fitfully to and fro. She stood for a few moments, waiting, listening for Mrs. Mosby. The shadows deepened and lengthened; they came creeping over the gra.s.s toward her, in their van the fading glow. All at once, as it were out of the twilight, the sunlight settled momentarily on the field at the bottom of the hill before her. Stark upright and in serried rows stretched the waste of last year's cornfield, the withered stalks touched with a pa.s.sing glory, standing quite proudly erect and then--blue-gray darkness. A mellow waste delivering a valedictory! Next year it would doubtless be ploughed up--prepared for a crop. Over beyond the crest of hills clouds were gathering like a smoke pall. She wondered if the factory chimneys were sending their beacons that far. There were forty miles between the two worlds.

A voice spoke behind her, a strange, unknown voice. She turned and went back to the bedside. Joe lay staring straight before him and his lips were moving stiffly. The words came m.u.f.fled and indistinct: "Tell you--got to have more money 'n that, Mr. Heston. 'Tisn't a question of just gettin' by. A man's got to get ahead." And then there was an unintelligible muttering. And then suddenly the voice rose, clear, querulous, and high-pitched: "Well you can go to h.e.l.l with it. Needn't think you're doin' us a favour--payin' us a living--just because you've got it all. No, sir! I can go back home. Can live there without havin' to thank _you_!" The voice died away.

She hung on the echo, shaken to the depths of her. Like a disembodied voice it had come out of the great silence. What was it all about? Who was Mr. Heston?

Then in a flash it all came clear to her. The mists arose from the past and before her stood envisioned all in the proper relationship: herself, Claybrook, and Joe; Bloomfield, the city, all of mankind.

Life was, after all, but one shrewd bargain; success a process of getting more than one gave; the survivors, shrewd bargainers, shouldering, edging, metamorphosed by a modern Circe, their forefeet and muzzles thrust eager and deep into the magic swill of her trough; and the others--creatures like Joe--untouched by the sorcery, going without and suffering discredit. Militant, her spirit rose in revolt.