Hugh and Clara were married in less than a week after their first walk
together. A chain of circumstances touching their two lives hurled them
into marriage, and the opportunity for the intimacy with a woman for
which Hugh so longed came to him with a swiftness that made him fairly
dizzy.
It was a Wednesday evening and cloudy. After dining in silence with his
landlady, Hugh started along Turner's Pike toward Bidwell, but when he
had got almost into town, turned back. He had left the house intending
to go through town to the Medina Road and to the woman who now occupied
so large a place in his thoughts, but hadn't the courage. Every evening
for almost a week he had taken the walk, and every evening and at almost
the same spot he turned back. He was disgusted and angry with himself
and went to his shop, walking in the middle of the road and kicking up
clouds of dust. People passed along the path under the trees at the side
of the road and turned to stare at him. A workingman with a fat wife,
who puffed as she walked at his side, turned to look and then began to
scold. “I tell you what, old woman, I shouldn't have married and had
kids,” he grumbled. “Look at me, then look at that fellow. He goes along
there thinking big thoughts that will make him richer and richer. I have
to work for two dollars a day, and pretty soon I'll be old and thrown on
the scrap-heap. I might have been a rich inventor like him had I given
myself a chance.”
The workman went on his way, grumbling at his wife who paid no attention
to his words. Her breath was needed for the labor of walking, and as for
the matter of marriage, that had been attended to. She saw no reason for
wasting words over the matter. Hugh went to the shop and stood leaning
against the door frame. Two or three workmen were busy near the back
door and had lighted gas lamps that hung over the work benches. They did
not see Hugh, and their voices ran through the empty building. One of
them, an old man with a bald head, entertained his fellows by giving
an imitation of Steve Hunter. He lighted a cigar and putting on his hat
tipped it a little to one side. Puffing out his chest he marched up and
down talking of money. “Here's a ten-dollar cigar,” he said, handing a
long stogie to one of the other workmen. “I buy them by the thousands to
give away. I'm interested in uplifting the lives of workmen in my home
town. That's what takes all my attention.”
The other workmen laughed and the little man continued to prance up
and down and talk, but Hugh did not hear him. He stared moodily at the
people going along the road toward town. Darkness was coming but he
could still see dim figures striding along. Over at the foundry back of
the corn-cutting machine plant the night shift was pouring off, and a
sudden glare of light played across the heavy smoke cloud that lay
over the town. The bells of the churches began to call people to the
Wednesday evening prayer-meetings. Some enterprising citizen had begun
to build workmen's houses in a field beyond Hugh's shop and these were
occupied by Italian laborers. A crowd of them came past. What would some
day be a tenement district was growing in a field beside a cabbage patch
belonging to Ezra French who had said God would not permit men to change
the field of their labors.
An Italian passed under a lamp near the Wheeling station. He wore
a bright red handkerchief about his neck and was clad in a brightly
colored shirt. Like the other people of Bidwell, Hugh did not like to
see foreigners about. He did not understand them and when he saw them
going about the streets in groups, was a little afraid. It was a man's
duty, he thought, to look as much as possible like all his fellow men,
to lose himself in the crowds, and these fellows did not look like other
men. They loved color, and as they talked they made rapid gestures with
their hands. The Italian in the road was with a woman of his own race,
and in the growing darkness put his arm about her shoulder. Hugh's heart
began to beat rapidly and he forgot his American prejudices. He wished
he were a workman and that Clara were a workman's daughter. Then, he
thought, he might find courage to go to her. His imagination, quickened
by the flame of desire and running in new channels, made it possible for
him, at the moment to see himself in the young Italian's place, walking
in the road with Clara. She was clad in a calico dress and her soft
brown eyes looked at him full of love and understanding.
The three workingmen had completed the job for which they had come back
to work after the evening meal, and now turned out the lights and came
toward the front of the shop. Hugh drew back from the door and concealed
himself by standing in the heavy shadows by the wall. So realistic were
his thoughts of Clara that he did not want them intruded upon.
The workmen went out of the shop door and stood talking. The bald-headed
man was telling a tale to which the others listened eagerly. “It's all
over town,” he said. “From what I hear every one say it isn't the first
time she's been in such a mess. Old Tom Butterworth claimed he sent her
away to school three years ago, but now they say that isn't the truth.
What they say is that she was in the family way to one of her father's
farm hands and had to get out of town.” The man laughed. “Lord, if Clara
Butterworth was my daughter she'd be in a nice fix, wouldn't she, eh?”
he said, laughing. “As it is, she's all right. She's gone now and got
herself mixed up with this swindler Buckley, but her father's money will
make it all right. If she's going to have a kid, no one'll know. Maybe
she's already had the kid. They say she's a regular one for the men.”
As the man talked Hugh came to the door and stood in the darkness
listening. For a time the words would not penetrate his consciousness,
and then he remembered what Clara had said. She had said something about
Alfred Buckley and that there would be a story connecting her name with
his. She had been hot and angry and had declared the story a lie. Hugh
did not know what the story was about, but it was evident there was a
story abroad, a scandalous story concerning her and Alfred Buckley. A
hot, impersonal anger took possession of him. “She's in trouble--here's
my chance,” he thought. His tall figure straightened and as he stepped
through the shop door his head struck sharply against the door frame,
but he did not feel the blow that at another time might have knocked him
down. During his whole life he had never struck any one with his fists,
and had never felt a desire to do so, but now hunger to strike and even
to kill took complete possession of him. With a cry of rage his fist
shot out and the old man who had done the talking was knocked senseless
into a clump of weeds that grew near the door. Hugh whirled and struck
a second man who fell through the open doorway into the shop. The third
man ran away into the darkness along Turner's Pike.
Hugh walked rapidly to town and through Main Street. He saw Tom
Butterworth walking in the street with Steve Hunter, but turned a corner
to avoid a meeting. “My chance has come,” he kept saying to himself
as he hurried along Medina Road. “Clara's in some kind of trouble. My
chance has come.”
By the time he got to the door of the Butterworth house, Hugh's
new-found courage had almost left him, but before it had quite gone he
raised his hand and knocked on the door. By good fortune Clara came to
open it. Hugh took off his hat and turned it awkwardly in his hands.
“I came out here to ask you to marry me,” he said. “I want you to be my
wife. Will you do it?”
Clara stepped out of the house and closed the door. A whirl of thoughts
ran through her brain. For a moment she felt like laughing, and then
what there was in her of her father's shrewdness came to her rescue.
“Why shouldn't I do it?” she thought. “Here's my chance. This man is
excited and upset now, but he is a man I can respect. It's the best
marriage I'll ever have a chance to make. I do not love him, but perhaps
that will come. This may be the way marriages are made.”
Clara put out her hand and laid it on Hugh's arm. “Well,” she said,
hesitatingly, “you wait here a moment.”
She went into the house and left Hugh standing in the darkness. He was
terribly afraid. It seemed to him that every secret desire of his
life had got itself suddenly and bluntly expressed. He felt naked and
ashamed. “If she comes out and says she'll marry me, what will I do?
What'll I do then?” he asked himself.
When she did come out Clara wore her hat and a long coat. “Come,” she
said, and led him around the house and through the barnyard to one of
the barns. She went into a dark stall and led forth a horse and with
Hugh's help pulled a buggy out of a shed into the barnyard. “If we're
going to do it there's no use putting it off,” she said with a trembling
voice. “We might as well go to the county seat and do it at once.”
The horse was hitched and Clara got into the buggy. Hugh climbed in and
sat beside her. She had started to drive out of the barnyard when Jim
Priest stepped suddenly out of the darkness and took hold of the horse's
head. Clara held the buggy whip in her hand and raised it to hit the
horse. A desperate determination that nothing should interfere with her
marriage with Hugh had taken possession of her. “If necessary I'll
ride the man down,” she thought. Jim came to stand beside the buggy.
He looked past Clara at Hugh. “I thought maybe it was that Buckley,” he
said. He put a hand on the buggy dash and laid the other on Clara's arm.
“You're a woman now, Clara, and I guess you know what you're doing. I
guess you know I'm your friend,” he said slowly. “You been in trouble,
I know. I couldn't help hearing what your father said to you about
Buckley, he talked so loud. Clara, I don't want to see you get into
trouble.”
The farm hand stepped away from the buggy and then came back and again
put his hand on Clara's arm. The silence that lay over the barnyard
lasted until the woman felt she could speak without a break in her
voice.
“I'm not going very far, Jim,” she said, laughing nervously. “This is
Mr. Hugh McVey and we're going over to the county seat to get married.
We'll be back home before midnight. You put a candle in the window for
us.”
Hitting the horse a sharp blow, Clara drove quickly past the house and
into the road. She turned south into the hill country through which lay
the road to the county seat. As the horse trotted quickly along, the
voice of Jim Priest called to her out of the darkness of the barnyard,
but she did not stop. The afternoon and evening had been cloudy and the
night was dark. She was glad of that. As the horse went swiftly along
she turned to look at Hugh who sat up very stiffly on the buggy seat and
stared straight ahead. The long horse-like face of the Missourian
with its huge nose and deeply furrowed cheeks was ennobled by the soft
darkness, and a tender feeling crept over her. When he had asked her
to become his wife, Clara had pounced like a wild animal abroad seeking
prey and the thing in her that was like her father, hard, shrewd and
quick-witted, had led her to decide to see the thing through at once.
Now she became ashamed, and her tender mood took the hardness and
shrewdness away. “This man and I have a thousand things we should say
to each other before we rush into marriage,” she thought, and was half
inclined to turn the horse and drive back. She wondered if Hugh had also
heard the stories connecting her name with that of Buckley, the stories
she was sure were now running from lip to lip through the streets of
Bidwell, and what version of the tale had been carried to him. “Perhaps
he came to propose marriage in order to protect me,” she thought, and
decided that if he had come for that reason she was taking an unfair
advantage. “It is what Kate Chanceller would call 'doing the man a
dirty, low-down trick,'” she told herself; but even as the thought came
she leaned forward and touching the horse with the whip urged him even
more swiftly along the road.
A mile south of the Butterworth farmhouse the road to the county seat
crossed the crest of a hill, the highest point in the county, and from
the road there was a magnificent view of the country lying to the south.
The sky had begun to clear, and as they reached the point known as
Lookout Hill, the moon broke through a tangle of clouds. Clara stopped
the horse and turned to look down the hillside. Below lay the lights of
her father's farmhouse--where he had come as a young man and to which
long ago he had brought his bride. Far below the farmhouse a clustered
mass of lights outlined the swiftly growing town. The determination
that had carried Clara thus far wavered again and a lump came into her
throat.
Hugh also turned to look but did not see the dark beauty of the country
wearing its night jewels of lights. The woman he wanted so passionately
and of whom he was so afraid had her face turned from him, and he dared
to look at her. He saw the sharp curve of her breasts and in the dim
light her cheeks seemed to glow with beauty. An odd notion came to him.
In the uncertain light her face seemed to move independent of her body.
It drew near him and then drew away. Once he thought the dimly seen
white cheek would touch his own. He waited breathless. A flame of desire
ran through his body.
Hugh's mind flew back through the years to his boyhood and young
manhood. In the river town when he was a boy the raftsmen and hangers-on
of the town's saloons, who had sometimes come to spend an afternoon on
the river banks with his father John McVey, often spoke of women and
marriage. As they lay on the burned grass in the warm sunlight they
talked and the boy who lay half asleep nearby listened. The voices came
to him as though out of the clouds or up out of the lazy waters of the
great river and the talk of women awoke his boyhood lusts. One of the
men, a tall young fellow with a mustache and with dark rings under his
eyes, told in a lazy, drawling voice the tale of an adventure had with
a woman one night when a raft on which he was employed had tied up near
the city of St. Louis, and Hugh listened enviously. As he told the tale
the young man a little awoke from his stupor, and when he laughed the
other men lying about laughed with him. “I got the best of her after
all,” he boasted. “After it was all over we went into a little room at
the back of a saloon. I watched my chance and when she went to sleep
sitting in a chair I took eight dollars out of her stocking.”
That night in the buggy beside Clara, Hugh thought of himself lying
by the river bank on the summer days. Dreams had come to him there,
sometimes gigantic dreams; but there had also come ugly thoughts and
desires. By his father's shack there was always the sharp rancid smell
of decaying fish and swarms of flies filled the air. Out in the clean
Ohio country, in the hills south of Bidwell, it seemed to him that the
smell of decaying fish came back, that it was in his clothes, that it
had in some way worked its way into his nature. He put up his hand
and swept it across his face, an unconscious return of the perpetual
movement of brushing flies away from his face as he lay half asleep by
the river.
Little lustful thoughts kept coming to Hugh and made him ashamed. He
moved restlessly in the buggy seat and a lump came into his throat.
Again he looked at Clara. “I'm a poor white,” he thought. “It isn't
fitten I should marry this woman.”
From the high spot in the road Clara looked down at her father's house
and below at the lights of the town, that had already spread so far over
the countryside, and up through the hills toward the farm where she had
spent her girlhood and where, as Jim Priest had said, “the sap had
begun to run up the tree.” She began to love the man who was to be
her husband, but like the dreamers of the town, saw him as something
a little inhuman, as a man almost gigantic in his bigness. Many things
Kate Chanceller had said as the two developing women walked and talked
in the streets of Columbus came back to her mind. When they had started
again along the road she continually worried the horse by tapping him
with the whip. Like Kate, Clara wanted to be fair and square. “A woman
should be fair and square, even with a man,” Kate had said. “The man I'm
going to have as a husband is simple and honest,” she thought. “If
there are things down there in town that are not square and fair, he
had nothing to do with them.” Realizing a little Hugh's difficulty
in expressing what he must feel, she wanted to help him, but when she
turned and saw how he did not look at her but continually stared into
the darkness, pride kept her silent. “I'll have to wait until he's
ready. Already I've taken things too much into my own hands. I'll put
through this marriage, but when it comes to anything else he'll have to
begin,” she told herself, and a lump came into her throat and tears to
her eyes.