AGNES TAKES A HAND
If Jack Routt had meant to force Hetty into Wint’s thoughts, he had
succeeded. Wint was not conscious of this when he left Jack at his gate;
he was thinking of other things. But during supper, an hour later, when
Hetty came into the dining room, Wint remembered what Jack had said; and
he looked at the girl with a keen scrutiny. He studied her, without
seeming to do so.
He was surprised to discover in how many ways Hetty had changed, since
she came to work for his mother. The changes were slight, they had been
gradual. But they were appallingly obvious, under Wint’s cool appraisal
now. He tallied them in his thoughts. Her laughter had been gayly and
merrily defiant; it was sullen, now, and mirthless. Her eyes had
twinkled with a pleasant impudence; they were overcast, these days, with
a troubling shadow. There was a shadow, too, upon the clear, milky skin
of her cheeks; it was a blemish that could neither be analyzed nor
defined. Yet it was there.
Hetty had slackened, too. Her hair was no longer so smoothly brushed, so
crisply drawn back above her ears. It was, at times, untidy. Her waists
were no longer so immaculate; her aprons needed pressing, needed soap
and water, too, at times. She had been fresh and clean and good to look
upon; she was, in these days, indefinably soiled.
After supper that night, Wint went out into the kitchen where Hetty was
washing dishes. He went on the pretext of getting a drink of water.
There had been a time, a few months ago, when Hetty would have turned to
greet him laughingly, and she would have drawn a glass of water and
given it to him. But she did neither of those things now. Instead, she
moved aside without looking at him, while he held the glass under the
faucet; and when he stepped back to drink, she went on with her work,
shoulders bent, eyes down.
Wint finished the glass of water, and put the glass back in its place.
Then he hesitated, started to go, came back. At last he asked
pleasantly: “Well, Hetty, how are things going?”
She looked at him sideways, with a swift, furtive glance. And she
laughed in the mirthless way that was becoming habitual. “Oh, great,”
she said, and her tone was ironical.
“What’s the matter?” Wint asked. “Anything wrong?”
“Of course not. Don’t be a kid. Can’t I have a grouch if I want to?”
“Sure,” he agreed amiably. “I have ’em, myself. Anything I can do to
bring you out of your grouch?”
“No.”
“If there is,” he said, so seriously she knew he meant his offer. “If
there is, let me know. Maybe I can help.”
“I’m not asking help,” she told him sullenly.
“Is there anything definite? Anything wrong?”
She said, with a hot flash of her dark eyes in his direction: “I told
you no, didn’t I? What do you have to butt in for?”
Wint considered that, and he filled his pipe and lighted it; and at last
he turned to the door. From the doorway he called to her: “If anything
turns up, Hetty, count on me.”
She nodded, without speaking; and he left her. He was more troubled than
he would have cared to admit; and he was convinced, in spite of what
Hetty had said, that there was something wrong.
The third or fourth day after, Hardiston meanwhile moving along the even
tenor of its way, Wint decided, after supper at home, that he wanted to
see Amos. He telephoned the Congressman’s home, and Agnes answered. He
asked if Amos was at home.
“He went uptown for the mail,” Agnes told him. “But he said he’d be
right back. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Tell him I’m coming down, will you?” Wint suggested, and Agnes promised
to do so. Wint took his hat and started for Amos’s home. He thought of
going through town on the chance of picking Amos up at the Post Office;
but the mail had been in for an hour, and he decided Amos would have
reached his home before he got there, so he went on. Wint and Amos lived
on the same street, but at different ends of the town. The better part
of a mile lay between the two houses. The stores and business houses
were the third point of a triangle of which the Chase home and Amos’s
formed the other angles.
The night was warm and moonlit; a night in June. The street along which
Wint’s route lay was shaded on either side by spreading trees, and lined
with the attractive, comfortable homes of Hardiston folks who knew what
homes should be. Wint met a few people: A young fellow with a flower in
his buttonhole, in a great deal of a hurry; a boy and a girl with linked
arms; a man, a woman here and there. At one corner, in the circle of
radiance from a sputtering electric light, a dozen boys were playing
“Throw the Stick.” Wint heard their cries while he was still a block or
two away; he saw their shadowy figures scurrying in the dust, or
crouching behind bushes and houses in the adjoining yards. As he passed
the light, a woman came to the door of one of the houses and called
shrilly:
“Oh-h-h, Willie-e-e-e-e!”
One of the boys answered, in reluctant and protesting tones; and the
woman called:
“Bedti-i-ime.” Wint heard the boy’s querulous complaint; heard his
fellows jeer at him under their breath, so that his mother might not
hear. The youngsters trained laggingly homeward; and the woman at the
door, as Wint passed, said implacably to her son:
“You go around to the pump and wash your feet before you come in the
house, Willie.”
The boy went, still complaining. And Wint grinned as he passed by. His
own days of playing, barefoot, under the corner lights were still so
short a time behind him that he could sympathize with Willie. Is there
any sharper humiliation than to be forced to come home to bed while the
other boys are still abroad? Is there any keener discomfort than to take
your two dusty feet, with the bruises and the cuts and the scratches
all crudely cauterized with grime, and stick them under a stream of
cold water, and scrub them till they are raw, and wipe the damp dirt off
on a towel?... Wint was half minded to turn back and join that game of
“Throw the Stick.” The bewildering moonlight, the warm air of the night
had somewhat turned his head. It required an effort of will to keep on
his way.
Agnes opened the door for him when he came to Caretall’s home. “Dad’ll
be here in a minute or two,” she said. “Come right in.”
Wint hesitated. “Oh, isn’t he home yet?”
“No, but he will be.” She laughed at him, in a pretty, inviting way she
had. “I won’t bite, you know.”
“I guess not,” he agreed good-naturedly. “But it’s a shame to go in the
house, a night like this.”
She said: “Wait till I get a scarf. Sit down. The hammock, or the
chairs. I’ll be right out.”
So Wint sat down, where the moonlight struck through the vines about the
porch and mottled the floor with silver. Agnes came out with something
indescribably flimsy about her fair head; and Wint laughed and said: “I
never could make out why girls think a thing like that keeps them warm.”
“Oh, but it does,” she insisted. “You’ve no idea how much warmth there
is in it.”
He shook his head, laughing at her. “That wouldn’t keep a butterfly warm
on the Sahara Desert.”
She protested: “Now you just see....” And she moved lightly around
behind him and wrapped the film of silken stuff about his head. “There,”
she said, and looked at him, and laughed gayly. “You’re the
funniest-looking thing.”
Wint unwound the scarf gingerly. “It feels like cobwebs,” he said. “I
don’t see how you can wear it. Sticky stuff.”
“Men are always afraid of things like cobwebs. Always afraid of little
things.”
Wint chuckled. “What’s this? New philosophy of life?”
“Can’t I say anything serious?”
“Why, sure. I don’t know but what you’re right, too.”
He had taken one of the chairs. She sat down in the hammock. “Come sit
here with me,” she invited. “That chair’s not comfortable.”
“Oh, it’s all right.”
She stamped her foot. “I should think you’d do what I say when you come
to see me.”
“Matter of fact, you know, I came to see your father.”
“Well, you’re staying to see me. If you don’t sit in the hammock, I’m
going in the house and leave you.”
Wint held up his hands in mock consternation. “Heaven forbid.” He sat
down beside her, as uncomfortable as a man must always be in a hammock;
and she leaned away from him, half reclining, enjoying his discomfort.
He could see her laughing at him in the moonlight. She pointed one
forefinger at him, stroked it with the other as one strops a razor.
“‘Fraid to sit in the hammock with a girl,” she taunted.
She was very pretty and provoking in the silver light; and Wint
understood that he could kiss her if he chose. He had kissed Agnes
before this. “Wink” and “Post Office” and kindred games were popular
when he and Agnes were in high school together. But--he had no notion of
kissing Agnes, moonlight or no moonlight. He had come to see Amos.
Amos’s daughter was another matter.
“When is Amos coming home?” he asked. “Has he called up? Maybe I’d
better walk uptown.”
“He called and said he was starting,” she assured him. “You stay right
here. He’ll be here, unless he gets to talking some of your old
politics. I suppose that’s what you came to see him for.”
“Oh, I just happened down this way....”
She sat up straight. “Good gracious. You act as though it were a secret.
Tell me, this minute.”
“Why, as a matter of fact,” said Wint good-naturedly, “I want to talk to
him about a sewer the city’s going to put in through some land he owns.
I guess you’re not interested in sewers.”
She grimaced, and said she should say not. “I thought maybe it was
something about the bootleggers,” she said. “Everybody’s talking about
them. What are you going to do to them?”
Wint laughed. “That’s like the instructions for destroying potato bugs,”
he said. “First, catch your potato bug.”
“You mean you haven’t caught any?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you trying to?”
“Why, we’ve got our eyes open.”
“I love to hear about criminals and everything,” she said. “What will
you do to them when you get them? Send them to jail?”
“Well, I’ll do that, if I can’t do anything worse.”
She asked: “You’re really going to--you really mean to get after them?”
He nodded, and she laughed. He asked:
“What’s the joke?”
“Oh, it seems funny for you to be so moral about whisky and things.”
He grinned. “It is funny, isn’t it?”
“I should think they’d just laugh at you.”
“Well, maybe they do.”
“I suppose you’re just going to give them a lesson, and then--sort of
let things go, aren’t you?”
Wint shook his head. “No, I sha’n’t let things go. Not as long as
I’m--in charge.”
“But lots of people will be awfully mad at you. Why, even your father
buys whisky and things, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, I suppose so. But he doesn’t sell them.”
“Well, some one’s got to sell them to him.”
“They’ll not sell in Hardiston,” said Wint. He was a little tired of
this. “Looks to me as though Amos has stopped to talk politics, after
all. Did you tell him I was coming?”
“Oh, yes,” she assured him. “He’ll be right home.” She got up abruptly.
“There’s some lemonade in the dining room,” she said. “Would you like
some?”
“Every time,” he said. “It’s warm enough to make it taste pretty fine,
to-night.”
She came out with a tall pitcher and two glasses, and filled his glass
and her own. They lifted the glasses together, and Wint touched his to
his lips. Then he took it down, and looked at it, and said:
“Hello!”
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“There’s a stick in this, isn’t there?”
“Yes. I always put a little in. Peach brandy. I love it.”
“Peach brandy, eh?”
“Yes. Don’t you like it?”
“Well, I’ve been letting it alone lately I guess I’ll not.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, Wint,” she protested, and stamped her foot at him.
“I guess a little brandy won’t hurt you!”
“No, probably not,” Wint agreed. “But I’m on the wagon, you see.”
“You make me feel as though I’d done something wrong to offer it to
you.”
“Why, no. Only, I....”
They were so interested that neither of them had heard Amos, and neither
of them had seen him stop by the gate for a moment, listening to what
they said. But when the gate opened, Agnes saw him, and the sight
silenced her. Amos came heavily toward the house, and Agnes called to
him:
“Wint’s here, dad.”
Amos said: “Oh! Hello, Wint!”
Wint said “Good evening.” Amos was up on the porch by this time, and
seemed to discover the lemonade.
“Hello, there,” he exclaimed. “That looks pretty good. I’m hot. Pour me
a glass, Agnes.”
She hesitated; and Wint said: “Take mine.”
“What’s the matter with it?” Amos asked good-naturedly. “Poisoned?” He
lifted the glass to his nose. “Oh, brandy, eh? Well, got anything
against that?”
“Oh, I’m on the wagon, myself, that’s all.”
Amos nodded. “Well, I never touch it. Not lately. Take it away, Agnes.”
His voice was gentle enough; but Wint thought the girl seemed very
white and frightened as she faced her father. She took pitcher and
glasses and went swiftly into the house. Amos turned to Wint, and sat
down, and asked cheerfully:
“Well, young fellow, what’s on your mind?”
* * * * *
When their business was done, and Wint had gone, Amos sat quietly upon
the porch for a while. Then, without moving from his chair, he turned
his head and called toward the open door:
“Agnes!”
She answered, from inside. He said: “Come here.” And she appeared in the
doorway. He bade her come out and sit down. She chose the hammock, lay
back indolently.
Amos filled his pipe with slow care and lighted it. His head was on one
side, his eyes squinted thoughtfully. If there had been more light,
Agnes could have seen that he was sorely troubled. But she could not
see. So she thought him merely angry; and grew angry herself at the
thought.
He asked at last: “You offered Wint booze?”
“Just some lemonade,” she said stiffly.
“Booze in it,” he reminded her. “Don’t you do that any more, Agnes.”
“I guess a little brandy won’t hurt Wint Chase,” she told him.
“Don’t you do it any more,” he repeated, finality in his tones. She said
nothing; and after a little he asked, looking toward her wistfully in
the shadows of the porch: “What did you do it for, Agnes? What did you
do it for, anyway?”
She shrugged impatiently. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“What did you do it for?” he insisted. There was an implacable strength
in Amos; she knew she could not escape answering. Nevertheless, she
evaded again.
“Oh, no reason.”
“What did you do it for?” he asked, mildly, for the third time; and
Agnes stamped to her feet. When she answered, her voice was harsh and
hard and indescribably bitter.
“Because I wanted to get him drunk,” she said. “He’s so funny when he’s
that way. That’s why.”
She stared down at him defiantly; and Amos saw hard lines form about her
mouth. Before he could speak, she was gone indoors.
Amos sat there for a long while, after that, thinking.... His thoughts
ran back; he remembered Agnes as a baby, as a schoolgirl. She was a
young woman, now.
He thought to himself, a curiously helpless feeling oppressing him: “I
wish her mother hadn’t’ve died.”