PART II

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STUBBLE

by

GEORGE LOOMS

Garden City New York

Doubleday, Page & Company

1922

Copyright, 1922, by

Doubleday, Page & Company

All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation

into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian

Printed in the United States

at

The Country Life Press, Garden City, N. Y.

First Edition

TO

MIS' KATIE

AND HER COURAGE

CONTENTS

PART I

PAGE

MARY LOUISE 1

PART II

MYRTLE 143

PART III

BLOOMFIELD 249

PART I

MARY LOUISE

STUBBLE

CHAPTER I

The front gate screaked, a slow, timid, almost furtive sort of screak,

and then banged suddenly shut as though it despaired of further

concealment. Mary Louise gathered her sewing to her, rose to her feet,

and looked out. It was raining. Through the glass upper half of the

door that opened from the sitting room upon the side porch she could

see the swelling tendrils of the vines that crawled about the trellis,

heavy and beady with the gathering moisture. It was one of those cold,

drizzly, early April rains that dares you by its seeming futility to

come forth and do weaponless battle and then sends you back

discomfited and drenched. A woman was coming up the walk bent in a

huddle over a bundle which she carried in her arms. Mary Louise gazed

searchingly for a moment and then, as the figure would have passed the

door, on around to the rear of the house, stepped out on the porch and

called:

"Zenie! Zenie! Come in this way. There's nobody around there."

Zenie raised her head in mute surprise and then slowly obeyed. She

shuffled across the porch, and at the door, which Mary Louise held

open for her, paused and looked about her in indecision. She was a

buxom creature, of the type that the Negroes about the station would

call a "High Brown," but without the poise and aplomb that conscious

membership in that class usually brings.

"Mis' Susie in?" she ventured, after a careful survey of the room had

assured her that such was not probable. And her care, relaxed for the

moment, allowed the corner of the shawl to fall from the bundle in her

arms, which forthwith set up a remote wailing, feeble and muffled,

though determined.

Mary Louise raised a skeptic eyebrow at the discredited Zenie.

"Sshh!" dispassionately urged the latter, scorning for once public

regard and continuing to gaze about the low-ceilinged room for the

absent but much-desired Miss Susie.

Such callous indifference baffled Mary Louise, even while it answered

her innermost questionings, and for the moment she was voiceless.

"What in the world----!" she said at length and hated herself for the

vulgar surprise in her tone.

Zenie turned away from the inspection and, finding herself and

appendage the centre of interest, bridled with a timid pleasure, and

then poked a ruminative finger into the swaddle of shawl and

comforter.

"Yas'm," she began in explanation. "Done brung 'im to show t' Mis'

Susie. Didn' know you wuz home." Her manner had all the affable ease

of a conscious equal.

Mary Louise rubbed her eyes. Time was bringing changes; Zenie had once

been humble. Her voice rang with an accusing hardness. "I thought

you'd shut the door on that worthless Zeke of yours."

Zenie did not raise her head but continued the aimless poking in the

bundle, which strangely responded to the treatment and was quiet

again. "No'm. He comes roun'. Eve' now an' then. Zeke's got a cah!" A

momentary gleam from dark eyes lit like coals into a sudden flare, and

Mary Louise was conscious of a pride that was fierce and strong, even

if new. She felt suddenly strange, foreign, like an intruder.

Their eyes met, and this time it was Mary Louise's that fell. She felt

embarrassed at the question that arose in her. Of course Zeke was the

father. Such a question to the emancipated Zenie would be paternally

insulting. She countered skillfully:

"What's--his name?"

Zenie shifted the bundle in her arms and then reached over with her

toe and thoughtfully pushed the stove door.

"Name Nausea," she replied softly, still regarding the door which

refused to shut entirely.

"Name's what?"

Zenie raised her eyes and smiled. It was a sudden unmasking of a

battery in a peaceful landscape. "Nausea Zekiel Thompson," Zenie

continued, gazing down into the bundle with the simplicity of a great

emotion.

For a moment silence descended upon the room. Mary Louise could not

trust herself in the customary amenities. She stepped over to Zenie

and the younger Thompson and peered into the bundle, conscious as she

did so of a slowly opening door beyond them. A tiny weazened face and

two beady blinking eyes were all she saw. Zenie was making a curious

clucking noise.

"Yas'm," Zenie went on, encouraged into an unwonted garrulity, "Mist'

Joe done give 'im that name. Hit's from de Bible, ain't it?"

"Mister Joe?"

"Yas'm. Mist' Joe Hoopah." There was a cheery ring to Zenie's voice

that had been wont to drag so dispiritedly. "He say hit come so

unexpeckedly an' all you kin do is make the bes' of it." Her face was

suddenly wreathed in an expansive smile. "Mist' Joe done hoorahin'

us--Zeke an' me. Zeke don' min'. Nossuh. He say de baby look lak him."

She held the bundle up and looked at it in rapt contemplation.

Mary Louise's lips shut in a tight line. She turned away from the pair

in distaste. But just then a light step sounded and her feeling was

diverted. Zenie did not hear the advent of another character upon the

scene so absorbed was she in holding the centre of the stage. "Think

hit's a pritty name, don' you?"

Receiving no answer she raised her eyes and beheld Miss Susie, whose

critical gaze enveloped her sternly. Zenie dropped her eyes again.

"So you've finally decided to show up again, Zenie?" Miss Susie

clipped her words off short to everyone. She was a wisp of a woman

with little hands as dry and yellow as parchment. Her voice had a

quavering falsetto break in it and her laugh, when there was occasion,

was dry and withery and short-lived like a piece of thistle-down.

Mary Louise was watching with interest. Zenie struggled for a moment

and then turned and faced the inevitable. There was a growing decision

in her manner.

"H'do, Mis' Susie! Yas'm. I 'cided I'd drop in on you-all. Show him to

his white folks." She looked at Miss Susie and smiled a most uncertain

smile.

And then for the first time was the import of the visit brought fully

to the visitee.

"So," Miss Susie exploded, "that's where you've been. Out of town!

Humph! You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Zenie looked as though she would like to defend herself, but it was

useless.

Miss Susie went on inexorably, "That worthless Zibbie Tuttle has been

tearing all my good linen and lace to pieces for the past three weeks.

And now I suppose I'll have to put up with her for a few weeks

longer."

"Yas'm," Zenie replied weakly.

"However"--Miss Susie pronounced it as though it were one syllable--"I

suppose I can't help it. What is it? Boy or girl?"

"Boy," said Zenie, and with growing decision, "but hit ain' him I come

to see you-all about. No'm. Thank you jes' as much. I jes' aim to tell

you I ain' take in no mo' wash. No'm. Zeke he don' want me to take in

no mo' wash. No'm."

"Zeke!" Miss Susie's snort was very ladylike. "Zeke!--and what has

Zeke to do with what _you_ want to do?"

"We'se ma'ied, ain' we, Mis' Susie?"

This was irrefutable, but more so the changing viewpoint. Zenie had

tasted emancipation. Miss Susie shrugged her shoulders and left the

room with short hurried steps.

Zenie turned to Mary Louise. "I'm tiahed of the ol' tub. 'Tain' no use

my weahin' myself out fu nuthin'. 'Sides, this heah boy a heap o'

trubbel." She shook her head doubtfully.

Mary Louise disregarded the confidence. "D'you say Mister Joe--Mister

Joe Hooper--named your baby? How could he? He's not even home."

"Yas'm. Yas'm, he is. He come in t' see Zeke this mo'nin'. Mist' Joe

lookin' mighty fine."

Mary Louise felt a curious sinking feeling of being shoved into a

discard. And then Miss Susie came hurrying back into the room. In her

hand she carried a small bundle of red flannel cloth freshly cut from

the bolt. Zenie eyed her uncertainly.

"Here. Here's something to keep out the cold--next winter. And you

oughtn't to bring _it_ out in such rainy weather." She went to the

door and held it open in all finality. And Zenie, with much secret and

inner scorning for a ritual so antiquated and a gift so obsolete,

could do naught but depart. Miss Susie had somehow managed to keep the

advantage, and the two white women watched the departing figure

shuffle down the walk, out through the sagging, screaky gate. The

clouds had broken in the west and a soft golden radiance suffused the

row of maples that lined the fence along the street, and the swelling

branches gleamed with promise. Over toward the east a patch of blue

sky appeared, and then the tip of a sickle moon thrust itself through

and floated entire for a moment on a tiny azure lake. A little breeze

came round the corner of the porch from the sunset. It was as soft and

warm as an unspoken promise, and it flipped back skirt hems and

twisted hair tendrils most inoffensively.

"Come, honey!" Miss Susie said at length, wrenching herself loose from

the charm. "It's getting late."

Mary Louise stepped slowly off the porch on to the spongy lawn that

stretched out to a summerhouse partly covered with the skeleton of

last summer's vines. "Just a minute, Aunt Susie," she answered,

without looking back. "I want to see how the hydrangea is coming on."

Miss Susie turned and closed the door behind her.

Bloomfield had a quality of unchangeableness. Even in the dead of

winter you could tell with half an eye how it would look bedecked in

its summer finery. Down the stretch of years, past many an intervening

milepost, it always stood clearly envisioned to its sons and daughters

both natural and adopted. There was about four hundred yards of

macadam street lined with oaks and maples as old as or older than the

meeting house of early Post-Revolutionary days which stood at the

cross-roads corner diagonally across from the glary white gasolene

station. Half-way down the street, in a cluster of elms, stood the

remnants of an ancient tavern, whose front wall, flush with the

sidewalk, showed occasional bullet scars on the rough red brownstone

surface. Green outside shutters lay inertly back from dull leaded

panes which reflected metallically the orange glow of the setting sun,

and over the door, which was squat and low and level with the

pavement, an ancient four-sided lantern, hung from a bracket of rusty

black iron, was gathering cobwebs in disuse. All this lay within Mary

Louise's field of vision from the summerhouse and yet she saw it not.

She was staring abstractedly at a wary robin that had stopped to rest

on a fence post, his beak all frowzy with the debris from a recent

drilling. The McCallum house--her father's--stood at the other end of

the row of maples on the same side of the street as the meeting house

and a hundred yards or so distant. There was quite an expanse of

greening lawn in front and to the south, whereon stood the

summerhouse, and a tangle of rose bushes hid the decaying board fence

which marked the southern boundary. Along the brick sidewalk stretched

a line of ageing wooden pickets and about midway in their extent hung

the wooden gate with the screak. The house was frame, low and

wide-stretching, with an inviting verandah about a cavernous front

door that was dark and rarely open. People used the side door into the

ell sitting room, and the brick walk leading in a curved sweep to this

doorway was free from grass. A high wooden lattice separated the front

lawn from the backyard and sheds and stables, and about this lattice

sprawled in luxuriant freedom rose vines and honeysuckle, just now

faintly budding into life.

Mary Louise stooped and punched a hole in the soft earth with a little

stick, unconsciously uprooting a tender shoot thereby. A black beetle

came scurrying out of the decaying baseboard at this disturbance and

was summarily filliped off into the greening wastes of lawn.

Collecting herself, she next inspected the branches of the plant near

by and finding sufficient promise of green, straightened up and flung

back an escaping wisp of hair, with a sigh.

There was nothing particularly noticeable about Mary Louise unless it

might possibly be a certain fine-drawnness. Her eyes, which were

brown, had a sort of set focus on the immediate, and there were some

fine lines from the corners of her lips to her nose. She was slim and

straight, with small hands and feet, and her arms, which were bare to

the elbow, might have been soft and round, were it not for a sinuous

tension that showed itself in little corded creases right where a

girl's arms should be softest and roundest. And her hair had a way of

coming down at all times and in all weathers. It had never been

decided whether she were pretty or not. That was something that had

never mattered--to her, at least.

As she threw back her head she was conscious of a general escaping of

hairpins and a loosening of hair. With a frown she dropped her stick

and turned her attention from horticulture to coiffure. A low whistle

sounded from somewhere beyond the rose vines, and as she turned, with

her fingers in her hair and elbows protruding, she saw a man come

swinging along the walk past the boundary fence, his eyes sweeping the

house from upstairs windows to side porch.

Mary Louise calmly proceeded with her toilette, making no sign. He

caught sight of her, paused a moment, and then vaulted stiffly over

the picket fence into the yard.

"'Lo," he said.

She had a hairpin in her mouth and returned the greeting with a slight

lifting of eyebrows. As her head was lowered and her chin tucked in,

this was a sufficiently effective reply.

"Musta rained pretty hard here," he ventured, as, noticing the damage

that the damp grass was doing to his trouser hems, he covered the

remaining distance between them in a series of violent haphazard

leaps.

The hairpin rendered her response unintelligible.

"How d'you find things?" gaining her side, and a bit more calmly.

Mary Louise deliberately tucked in one last recalcitrant wisp and

pinned it down, and then turned to him. "Pretty well." Her gaze was

level and critical.

"Aunt Sue better?"

She nodded. Then she turned and slowly walked within the inclosure of

the summerhouse and sat down. He followed her and stood framed in the

doorway.

"What's the gloom?" he asked directly, after a moment of silence.

"Nothing," she said, a little too brightly.

"Not interrupting anything, am I?"

Disregarding this: "What are you doing in Bloomfield?"

He laughed. "Aren't sorry I came, are you? This is Saturday. Times

have changed. Maybe you don't know. Proletariat's riding high."

"They're giving you the whole day now?" in a mildly dubious tone.

He turned away. "No. But Uncle Buzz was in a jam, and--well, I thought

I'd better come." He turned on her suddenly. "Keeping tab on me,

aren't you? How'd you know?"

"I reckon I'd better, Joe." And then more softly: "Think it's the best

way to do? Uncle Buzz's been in deep water before." She rose to her

feet and walked slowly to the opposite entrance. "How are things--at

the works?"

He was silent a moment. "Same old place. Take more'n a war to change

'em." He came and stood beside her in the doorway. The sun was making

a last desperate attempt to lighten the general gray of the sky with

broad shafts of orange, and as they watched, it settled slowly and

then dipped behind the dim blue of the distant hills. As at a signal,

a bird in a thicket somewhere over beyond them began a long throaty

warble. Another answered over to the left. Faint, liquid

trip-hammerings, they were, upon brittle anvils.

"It's a good thing some things don't change," she said at length, in a

low tone.

"I reckon."

They watched the glow fade from the sky, the broad bands of orange

receding swiftly westward, while the cloud rim above the horizon

cooled softly into pink and coral and a sudden soft patter of rain

upon the dried vines and leaves above their heads aroused them.

Without a word, Mary Louise slipped past him and ran for the house. He

followed.

On the side porch she turned and waited for him, and he came and stood

before her, hatless, in the rain. "I'd better be getting back before

it gets any worse--see you in the morning?"

"Let me get you an umbrella." She turned and was about to enter the

house.

"No. Can't use 'em. Get hung up in the trees. What time you want to

start out? Nine o'clock? See you at nine."

"That's too early. Make it ten. I'm busy. Besides, it's Sunday."

"Comin' at nine," he called over his shoulder and started for the

gate.

She watched his retreating figure as he darted along through the

shadow, and then she slowly turned and entered the sitting room. A dim

yellow light from a single oil lamp on the table over against the

right wall was feebly penetrating the deep shadows in far corners. The

low-ceilinged room seemed huge and cavernous, with deep niches and

crannies and bulky, shadowy objects. Miss Susie sat by the table with

her knitting, her face yellower than ever, her hands feverishly

restive. She raised her head as Mary Louise closed the door, and the

tiny lines, accentuated by the lamplight, covered her face like

markings upon an ancient scroll.

"Why didn't he come in, honey?"

"I don't know, Aunt Susie. He was in a hurry."

"What's he doing in town? Thought he'd gone back to work in

Louisville."

"I don't know, Aunt Susie."

Miss McCallum picked up her knitting. She sniffed. "No, I s'pose not."

Mary Louise went over and kissed her aunt lightly upon the forehead,

and then disappeared through a shadowy door back into shadowy depths.

Directly came a sound of clattering tinware and then the faint echoes

of a song, hummed, and slightly nasal. A smile flickered across Miss

Susie's lips as she watched her fingers--the needles flitting swiftly

in and out.

CHAPTER II

They drew rein on a hill which sloped gently away to the town a mile

or so distant. Over to the right in a cluster of trees gleamed the

white fences and buildings of the Bloomfield Fair Grounds like a blob

of paint squeezed on a dark palette.

Mary Louise turned in the saddle and took a long thirsty look at the

western sky. "I love these days that are unplanned. They bring so much

more when there isn't any promise."

Joe took off his hat and wiped his forehead, keeping tight rein in the

meantime with his other hand on his roan saddler, who, scenting the

home stretch, was restless to be off. "After which original tribute to

my day, I hesitate to tell you that it has been a hunch of mine for

over a year--ever since that first spring in Texas. Made up my mind if

ever I struck God's country alive and in one piece, I'd treat myself

to a great bath of this sort of stuff. Unplanned! Humph!"

Mary Louise's tight little mouth relaxed but she did not shift her

gaze. "You forget. It was not planned--by me." On rare occasions Mary

Louise could slip from her matter-of-fact self into coquetry and back

again before one realized. It was like the play of a lightning

shuttle, so quick that one rarely caught the flash of the back stroke.

Joe had erred before. He was discreetly silent.

"I love it," Mary Louise went on, flinging back her head, "every

stick, every stone of it. That half mile of turf down Blue Bottle

Lane! I'd give ten years of my life to gallop the rest of it through

country like that." And then, as though startled, she bit her lip and

was still.

Joe smiled as he watched her narrowly. "A woman's a mess o'

contradictions. Whoa! You, too," he called sharply to his mare.

"Thought you wanted to eat grass a little. Whoa!" He reined up the

tossing head with difficulty. And then to Mary Louise, "You're a sort

of self-inflicted exile, aren't you?"

Mary Louise turned from her musing and gave him a look of most

effective scorn. "Put your hat on," she said coldly. "You talk better

through it." She was backing her mount out from the thicket whence he

had thrust his nose and was wheeling him about to point him toward

home. "I suppose you'd leave your job in Louisville and come back here

to live yourself--just because you loved the scenery!"

"Not such a bad swap at that." But she was off and away. One rearing

plunge and he was after her. Down across the grassy sweep of turf

they fled, across a shallow ditch, past a stretch of willow thicket,

around a jutting knob of rock, into an arching avenue of trees. It was

like dropping into a cool, shadowy bowl, the first shoots and

sproutings of baby leaves from the branches casting a delicate tracery

of shadow on the golden-green shimmer of the grass. Through an open

gate they shot, he close behind, out upon a hard metallic roadway of

macadam. Here Mary Louise reined in her horse and Joe instantly drew

up alongside.

"It's lucky the street came along to help," he breathed. "Twenty yards

more----"

Mary Louise reached up a hand to her hair in a futile effort to stem

the havoc there. A moment of furious attempt to quiet the racing in

her veins, and then, quite calmly, "It's all as it should be. We've

got to look out for such things and take advantage of them. There are

no ifs and buts about being caught. You didn't--that's all."

Joe opened his mouth to speak, stared at her a moment, and then turned

away his eyes. They trotted along in silence, the shadows deepening

and lengthening.

Directly: "When does your tea room open?"

"To-morrow. I'll be fine and stiff to start it off." Both question and

answer had taken on a fine flavour of impersonality. Quiet again, with

only the clatter of hoofs on the roadway. Directly they turned a wide

sweeping curve and before them appeared a wooden gateway set at the

end of an avenue of elms, at the other end of which showed, dim and

forbidding, a house with columns and a green roof. Joe dismounted and,

unlatching the gate, turned and stood grinning at her.

"So you're really goin' to try it out?" His voice had the quality of

self-questioning.

It broke in on her musings and she seemed a bit impatient. "Of course

I'm going to try it out. Only there isn't much 'try' to it. It's bound

to make a go."

"Some little difference between a merely commercial proposition and a

popular charity like the Red Cross. There's no percentage in just

guzzlin' tea for fun unless you're doin' it to keep Americans from

starvin' or doughboys from itchin'. You know what I believe?" He

turned on her suddenly. "You're just scrapin' up an excuse to--to----"

He stammered, hesitated in indecision. "Tea!"

"Don't be maudlin, Joe!" Her tone was very cold. "If you must know, we

need the money and----Well, I guess I learned enough about _tea_ and

_tea rooms_ in the past ten or eleven months to know whether one will

pay or not--if it's properly run. Got awfully hardboiled while you

were in the army, didn't you? Come, open the gate."

He was silent. Mary Louise usually could put him in his place. But

thus put in his place, Joe could assume all the irritable

stick-to-itiveness of a child. "How about Miss Susie?"

He watched the shot. For a moment it had no seeming effect, and then

Mary Louise, turning loose all the pent-up outpourings to inner

questionings, in a fury of righteous self-justification: "You needn't

think I haven't thought about that. You needn't think I'm shirking my

duty in any way. If you _knew_, you wouldn't ask such a question.

Before you left we were just on the ragged edge, and now--well,

somebody's got to do something to bring the money in. The place don't

make it." Her voice quieted down a little. "It hasn't been an easy

question to solve. Come, Joe! Open the gate."

He watched her curiously. "But the servants? You've still got the

servants, Matty, and Old Landy, and that half-baked gorilla, Omar. Why

not----"

"Yes, why not?" She turned on him. "Why not shut down the place, too,

as well as dismiss all the servants, and live in one of the old stone

quarters? Why not? Why not let your heels run down if they want to?

It's much easier."

Quietly he pushed the gate open and stood waiting, holding it for her.

Something in his manner struck her, and she reached out her hand from

her seat in the saddle and touched him lightly as her horse swerved

past. "There, I'm sorry, Joe. But you just hounded me into it somehow.

I didn't mean it's that way with you. You know I didn't. You see what

I mean? One ought to try. Ought to try everything first, not just

give up because everything doesn't seem just right. I _have_ thought

about Aunt Susie, and it breaks me all up. But it can't be helped."

She waited till he closed the gate and with a quick swing-up into the

saddle drew alongside. Slowly they walked their horses up the avenue.

"I s'pose you're right," he said at length. "Only--only it has seemed

to me that there's a lot of good time wasted doing useless things.

Would you rather run a tea room than do anything else in the world?"

She looked at him but they were passing a bend in the road, and the

sun, having dipped behind a jutting hill, no longer lighted up the

dusky avenue, and Joe's face was in semi-shadow. "I'd rather hold on

to what I've got than lose the tiniest portion of it," was all she

said.

Suddenly he threw back his head and laughed. "If they could only see

me now!"

"They? Who, they?"

His face sobered, but there was a momentary twinkle about the eyes.

"Who? Oh, at the office." And then, as dismissing the thought, "Uncle

Buzz know you're openin' the tea room?"

"No."

"Then you ought to tell him. Give you a lot of invaluable suggestions

as to how to mix up little 'what-for-you's.' Get 'em comin' and goin'.

Also, Uncle Buzz's got a mint bed that has parts."

"There's some patronage we will be forced to do without," Mary Louise

replied primly. They were nearing the house and as they approached,

someone in one of the front rooms struck a light and it could be seen

moving, the shadows dancing on the walls.

"Don't overlook Uncle Buzz," said Joe with a chuckle. "Don't overlook

any discriminatin' taste. You can't beat those horses of his."

"No," agreed Mary Louise, "nor----" and then checked herself.

The roadway turned sharply to the left and finished off in a circle,

one arc of which touched the steps of an open porch. These steps were

sagging and decayed, and the porch was swept by the gentle eddyings of

leaves of past summers that had sought refuge there and had been

undisturbed by the ruthless sweepings of winds or brooms. There was a

haunting odour of pine and something else that was damp and old and

weary and forgotten, and a shrivelled wisteria vine that clung with

withered fingers to a trellis at the house corner began to whisper at

their approach. A yellow bar of light shot for a moment across the

porch floor to their feet, then disappeared. It was the lamp Mary

Louise had seen farther down the driveway, and directly the side door

opened and the mellow glow of it sent shadowy rings of light out

toward them.

"Joe! Joe!" called out an anxious voice. "Don't make noise. Keep 'way

from the back." There was a moment's silence and as Joe made no

reply: "Come in this way, why don't you? Better way come in."

And then Mary Louise saw a hand shade the uppermost part of the lamp.

Then there was a pause, and then a figure came across the porch, a

short figure casting grotesque shadows, a bit stiff, a bit unsteady,

like the rings of light that went out in circling waves behind it. It

was Uncle Buzz. He came and stood on the topmost rotting step. He

bowed. With one hand holding the wavering lamp, the other bravely

cupped before his chest, he bowed.

"Pardon," he said. "'N't know there were ladies."

"Miss McCallum, Uncle Buzz," interposed Joe.

"Honoured, 'm sure," Uncle Buzz responded with another bow, lower if

anything than the first, so that the tip of his little goatee came

within singeing distance of the lamp chimney, and he straightened back

with a start, only to stare about him again, vaguely hurt. Collecting

himself again, "Knew there was reason shouldn't go 'roun' th' back.

Le' Zeke take horses. Zeke! Zeke!" he called in a falsetto quaver.

"Come in this way, madam," he added with grave dignity, but curtailing

the bow.

For a moment Mary Louise was fascinated. Old Mr. Bushrod Mosby she had

known for years--a veritable rustic macaroni, a piece of tinselled

flotsam floating on backwater. He had always called her M'Lou; later

occasionally Miss M'Lou. Now the rhythm of some ancient rout was

stirring old memories, and the obligations of host sat pleasantly

heavy upon his befogged consciousness. He bowed again.

"No, thank you," she summoned her resources. "We'll be getting home.

But we'll just leave the horses here," she added a bit hurriedly,

anxious to be off. Echoes were sounding along a length of hallway and

she was not desirous of the prospect of seeing Mrs. Mosby--Aunt

Loraine--who was apt to prove a most discordant fly in the ointment of

harmonious hospitality. So she turned to go, but turned too late. The

door opened again and another figure appeared, a brisk figure, at

which the dead leaves of the porch bestirred themselves in vague,

uneasy rustlings. Uncle Buzz stepped meekly aside and Mrs. Mosby--Aunt

Loraine--joined the group, giving him a momentary withering glance.

She was an inexorable woman, an inch taller than Uncle Buzz, who stood

five feet three, but she matched him whim for whim in her attire. Her

hair looked black in the graying light; in reality it was splotched

and streaked with a chestnut red, colour not so ill as misapplied. Her

dress rustled as she swept forward and there were numberless faint

clickings and clackings of chains and bangles about her. A high boned

collar with white ruching helped her hold her head even more proudly

straight, and the smile she shot Mary Louise was heavily fraught with

a sickly sweet though rigorous propriety.

"You must come in, my dear," she lisped. "Such exhausting exercise!

You wouldn't think of going one step further without resting.

Here"--she reached out one hand toward Mary Louise, testing the

meanwhile the security of the upper step with the tip of a shiny

shoe--"the man will attend to the horses."

"Man! Yes," Uncle Buzz recollected with a start. "Zeke! Zeke!" he

began to shout again. "Come here, suh!"

"Bushrod! Be still!" hissed Mrs. Mosby.

Almost was Mary Louise tempted to accept and stay, he looked so

helpless, in such terrific danger, standing there blinking at them,

his eyes vaguely trying to focus, and so mildly blue. His head with

the graying hair so closely cropped gave him an odd appearance of

boyishness, to which the smart little bow tie added not a little. He

was trim, dapper, in spite of the fact that his standing collar was a

size or two too large; in spite, too, of the tiny, well-trimmed

goatee. He looked like a faun in trouble. With a shadow of distress

crossing his face, he gave ground and backed away, the lamp tipping

perilously in his grasp. Joe sprang forward and rescued it, setting it

on the porch railing.

"We'd better be going, I reckon, Aunt Lorry. Miss Susie's all alone,"

he explained.

Mary Louise recovered herself with a start. What could she be thinking

of, letting Joe make her excuses for her? Somehow she felt a sharp

little wave of irritation against him for it. She hastened to add,

however, "Oh, no, Mrs. Mosby. Thank you so much. I really must be

getting home. Aunt Susie _will_ be worried. It's quite dark."

The little woman murmured something, and then, "And how is your Aunt

Susie? I must call. Give her my love, be sure," all in one breath.

"I will. You must," agreed Mary Louise, and turned to go. And as she

did so she caught a most lugubrious expression on the face of Uncle

Buzz, a gradual lengthening of all the muscles on one side of the

face, resolving itself finally into a prodigious wink, deliberate and

malign. Fortunately, it passed in the darkness the regard of the

partner of his joys and sorrows and roused no answering spark.

They made their adieus and passed on down the shaded avenue on foot.

Mary Louise gave an odd little shiver as they walked out into the

shadow, past the circle of the lamp on the railing. Uncle Buzz--Mr.

Mosby--had seemed always just a piece of background, a harmless bit of

scenery, a catalogue of amenities, a husk, a shell--she wondered how

many other things. And now he was cropping out with a personality, had

desires, problems, secret plottings, all behind the mask--a

Machiavelli.

She was aroused by a chuckle from Joe. The chuckle jarred. She turned

and frowned at him in the darkness. Their shoes crunched in the small

gravel of the roadway and then directly they came to the gate and

turned along a wooden walk.

"Uncle Buzz's sure ripe," Joe's voice came out of nowhere. "Been ripe

for over two days. Time he was being picked," he continued.

"Joe!"

"Oh, don't get shocked. You aren't, you know. It's nothin' new!" He

paused a moment as if to consider. "Reckon Aunt Lorry's busy with the

pickin' now. She'll hate you," he added as an afterthought.

"What for?" asked Mary Louise.

"For seein' him." Joe chuckled again and relapsed into silence.

They walked the rest of the way without speaking, around one corner

past the old meeting house, beneath the low-branched maples, up to the

McCallum gate. Mary Louise opened it and held it open, her arm barring

the way.

"Well! To-morrow's another day," said Joe, apparently disregarding it.

"It's just as well," replied Mary Louise. "I'm not quite sure the

army's helped you much, Joe."

"The army? Helped me?--I don't get you," he tried to see her eyes,

puzzled.

"You're flippant--about things that are not trivial."

"Oh!" he laughed. "It doesn't always rain when it clouds. Wait till we

get into some real heavy weather. What's the harm, anyway? We should

bother."

"That's not the only thing. You were making fun of Zenie's baby--just

like it was a little animal. They might find out some day _how_ you

quoted from the Bible. Of course, there's no real harm done--but I

don't like it."

Joe slid his hand softly along the top bar of the wooden gate till it

touched hers. She drew quietly away. "Perhaps!" he said. "The old

world runs along pretty well whether we bother or whether we don't. It

doesn't make much difference what we do or what we don't. The old

fellow's heart's all right, I reckon, and as for the niggers!--just as

good a name as Loraine. My Lord!"

She stood silent, in thought. A faint reddish glow came to them from

the curtained glass door of the ell sitting room. "Just a little

sermon to start us out right--back to work. It _is_ a serious

business, you know, Joe--reconstruction! It's a big task. Let's not

fall down on it or be trivial--shirk any of the responsibilities.

Good-night," she added suddenly, giving her hand. "It's been a

glorious day. I'll see you--in the city."

They parted, and he could hear her scrape her feet at the edge of the

porch. The stars were winking through the branches of the maples and

somewhere in the darkness a gutter was keeping up a monotonous

dripping. He passed the corner and turned back to the road with the

overlapping elms, walking with his hands thrust deep into his pockets,

his eyes watching the road. "Humph!" he said after a while, out loud,

and then began to whistle softly to himself, shuffling with his feet

on the gravel in time to his whistling as he walked.

CHAPTER III

Joe Hooper was not a handsome man. He was of that type so often seen

in the South, tall, gangly, and very dark, with a sallow complexion

and a general air of inertness that always misleads the stranger to

the type. Insignificant looking, perhaps, but they will be found, on

later acquaintance, to be worming themselves into general regard

without effort. The law claims many of them and occasionally the

raising of stock and the tilling of soil, though usually as

proprietors only, it is true. Sometimes they are swept into strange

waters where, if they float about long enough, they manage by some

inherent mordant capacity to colour the entire complexion to their

own. There are exceptions, of course.

Joe's father had lost his farm through foreclosure. It killed him.

This fact and the presence of some alien strain sent Joe to Louisville

which had some of the elements of the melting pot and some traditional

elements of opportunity. He was twenty-four when he made this change.

For two years he had resisted fusion and escaped opportunity. He had

fallen into a job with the Bromley Plow Company and risen to the

exalted status of stock clerk when the war came. The war, or rather

the idea of the war, had proved a great relief to his imagination and

he had enlisted at once, as a matter of fact, on the second day. This

notion of service had been the one thing stronger than the influence

of Mary Louise, which had been, it must be confessed, the main reason

for his sticking as long as two years. The Plow Works had seemed a

rather tedious road to a _Restoration_ and the _Barebones Parliament_

that sat in the inner office had seemed inexorably determined to make

that road as devious and difficult as possible. He had escaped gladly.

But the war had come to an end with him still in service on this side

and he had at length returned with many things unsatisfied. One of

these had been his idea about Mary Louise. She, too, had been swept

into the vortex, into a mild eddy of it. The Red Cross had found her

useful in the maintenance of a tea room for the enjoyment of the men

at Camp Taylor. It had sounded innocent enough, but upon Joe's return

he had found that she had in some way been galvanized. She was one of

the war's changes; he, unfortunately, not so.

He did not know clearly just what he had expected upon his return, but

then he had not expected the kind of return that he had experienced.

There had been nothing epochal in it. Even his job was waiting for

him; it seemed to him even the same routine details. One file of

correspondence that he had found upon his desk that first morning had

had a singularly familiar look. It would always stick in his memory.

First there had been a moment of high anticipation at the station with

the taxi-men calling out the names of the hotels, and stretched across

Main Street he remembered seeing a large banner flanked with bunting

and with "Welcome Home" inscribed thereon. Then he had watched the

familiar landmarks as he rolled southward in the street car with an

odd little feeling of "Hello, there you are again"; and the Works,

looming up in the distance at the end of the line, with its tall brick

stack, was a sort of culmination. Not exactly a culmination, either,

for he was conscious of a jarring note. Then the oak-panelled lobby,

with the time clock, a sombre monitor, took just another grain of

carefree satisfaction from the sum total of his feelings; and

finally--his desk, and the worn, thumb-edged file! The first letter

therein! "Recent shipments castings EE23, G143, F47, and J29 have come

to us unannealed. J29 shows fins and sprues; the hole in EE23 is in

most cases completely closed; and G143 and F47 are so rough that they

will not fit into their respective sockets without machining. Will

return same via local freight to-day." That was all. An Homeric

welcome into very deep water! Such had been Joe Hooper's homecoming.

As for Mary Louise:--well, there had been nothing quite so definite.

He had met her at the tea room--there had been one final week of

closing after his arrival--and he had not quite made up his mind about

her before she had left for Bloomfield, beyond a certain stiffening of

fibre, an aloofness that was new, and a business-like air that seemed

to say "Come across," that he did not exactly like. But then a week is

not a very long time to get down to bed-rock with a person, especially

when that person is busy ten hours out of the day and thinking the

other fourteen about the ten that have just passed.

Four weeks had rolled around. It was the first of May. Joe sat at his

desk absently fingering a stack of paper slips. They were reports from

the various assembling shops advising him of the number of bolts of

certain styles and sizes used in those respective shops that day. He

was supposed to post these amounts in a stock ledger against the

various sizes and styles and note the approaching shortages wherever

they came. There were between fifty and a hundred slips. The window

was open opposite his desk and a delightful breeze was curling up the

edges of some papers which had been thoughtfully weighted down. Joe

gazed, heavy lidded, through the window. An automobile, a long,

slouchy black one, went whirling by with the tonneau full of girls.

Their veils were streaming and fluttering out behind, many-hued and

flimsy. They were all gazing at the office windows as they passed.

"One might think it was a reformatory or the county workhouse or

something," he thought. He turned dully to the stack of reports and

began to count them. He felt stale--flat.

He heard his name called, and turning, saw Mr. Boner standing at the

corner of the partition looking at him over his spectacles. Mr. Boner

was a tall, heavy man with nervous twitchings and anxious eyes that

were eternally shifting about beneath their brows for something

disturbing. He was responsible for keeping the warehouse filled, the

warehouse whose books Joe kept, and it was his further duty to keep it

filled as cheaply as possible. The threat of failure in either was

what caused that eternal shifting. It was a sort of high-tension

vigilance.

Joe rose to his feet, obeying the monosyllabic summons, and followed

Mr. Boner around the partition. Mr. Boner rated a private office,

where he could worm information, trade secrets, and occasional

concessions from travelling salesmen. There was nothing social about

the place. As Joe turned the partition corner and stood in the

doorway, the old man had already seated himself at the desk. His fat

hips completely filled the chair. He was apparently staring at

something on the desk before him, but Joe could catch the occasional

shifting glimmer of his eyes at the corners and knew he was looking

at him. Suddenly Mr. Boner turned to the inner corner of the desk,

started to speak, strangled, and with difficulty recovered himself.

His voice, when finally he did recover it, was so loud that it

startled even himself, and just as suddenly he lowered it to

confidential pitch. Joe had been a witness to this procedure many

times before but it never failed to interest him. In fact, Mr. Boner

was himself a study. There was an old-fashioned golf cap perched on

the top of his graying head and his close-clipped moustache was

silvery white, in marked contrast to the pink-and-white mottle of his

cheeks, which hung down over his collar in folds, like some dependable

old foxhound's. One hand lay fat and puffy on the desk, clutching a

pencil in a nervous grip. And the middle of him--he seemed to bulk and

fill out the entire chair--so incongruous with his little feet and

mincing gait! It was as though as much as possible of his body were

seeking to escape that all-devouring tension in relapse. How familiar

it all was! Even during those months at camp the picture would recur

and Joe would laugh softly to himself. Poor old duffer! He was a

product of the plant just as much as ploughs and tillage implements

were. How soon would _he_ begin to show the indelible imprint?

The voice rose sharply. Joe realized that Mr. Boner was speaking to

him--was speaking with great feeling. He came back to realities with a

jerk.

"Out of carriage bolts two one half one quarter," he was saying. It

was probably the second time he had said it. He choked with emotion

and had to seek refuge again in the receptacle on the floor at the

left-hand corner of his desk.

Joe seemed unmoved.

"Book shows been out since April nineteenth." The old man turned to

observe the effect of his damnation.

Joe quivered but showed no sign.

"Make out memorandum cut down one thousand five one half by one

quarter." He spoke it explosively, keeping a furtive eye on that

left-hand corner. "Have a surplus eleven thousand of them."

Joe guiltily felt that the old man knew the stock books better than he

himself. A little spot of red appeared in each cheek.

Mr. Boner shoved two sheets of yellow paper across the desk toward

him. "I've reordered replacement one thousand five one half,

cancellation one thousand two one half." This with an air of

satisfaction. There was nothing more to be done, patently. "Waste

stock," Mr. Boner muttered.

Joe turned to go.

Mr. Boner exploded again. This was not all, apparently. "Blue annealed

sheets," he called, sputtered, gripped the arms of his chair

convulsively, recovered, and sat glaring helplessly.

Joe availed himself of the opportunity. "Have a memo for you on the

desk." In spite of himself his voice sounded nervous. "Just out of two

sizes to-day." He waited.

The old man turned and bent his head over his work. _That_ was over.

Joe returned to his desk, got the memo, and entered the little office

again. As he slipped the paper across an intervening table, Mr. Boner

straightened from a stooping inspection of a lower desk drawer, and

Joe saw him furtively wipe a knife blade on the leg of his trousers

and then turn upon him a look of mildest blue. There was a bulge in

his left cheek as round as an acorn. Neither spoke. A privacy had been

violated. Joe felt like a "Peeping Tom."

Noiselessly he slipped around the corner, back to his desk. The breeze

was still blowing merrily through the window and two clerks at desks

across the aisle were shoving pencils and rulers and like equipment

into their proper drawers with a smug sort of satisfaction shining in

their drawn faces. He looked at his watch. It lacked a minute of

five-thirty. Then he looked at the stack of reports again, paused, and

with an air of sudden decision dropped them into an open drawer.

Opening another drawer he swept all the movable articles on his desk

thereinto, careless of the confusion he caused, seized his hat from a

peg behind him, and strode across the office, out through the door,

into the oak-panelled lobby. For a moment he stood before the clock.

Its hands showed five twenty-nine. He paused, then deliberately

punched his number, descended the steps, and went out through the door

on to the street. The whistle was blowing as he went down the walk.

The street was deserted. He felt eyes somewhere on his back but walked

on in apparent unconcern. He was conscious of a peculiar mixture of

emotions, a little guilt, a little shame, a little furtiveness, and

more than any, a lifting sense of relief, freedom. The air was light,

cool, and invigorating. There was a pleasant crunch of dry dusty

cinders beneath his feet. And then he saw a venturesome bluebird come

darting across the open fields to the west and perch for a moment on

the top strand of the barbed-wire fence of the Plow Works, a few yards

ahead of him. It sat there swaying and watching him and, as he

approached nearer, it took wing and darted across the Plow Company's

grounds eastward toward the city. Joe filliped a wire paper clip after

it.

"You had better turn around and go back where you came from," he

called after it softly.

He proceeded homeward.

As he climbed the boarding-house stairs to his room he felt listless.

For four weeks he had climbed those listless stairs. There had been

one brief respite--the two days of Bloomfield with its easy

relaxation. What lay at the end of the road? Whither was he tending?

Mr. Boner's shoes? His desk was the step next below the little

private office. He laughed shortly to himself as he opened a bureau

drawer and selected a clean white shirt. The touch of the clean linen

encouraged him a little. He began to whistle. He had a "date on" with

Mary Louise. He had asked her to go to the vaudeville. Two or three

hours of pleasant forgetfulness, anyway. Mary Louise--the thought of

her brought a vague feeling of unrest. For over two weeks he had tried

to get her over the 'phone. She had either been out when he had called

or had pleaded some other engagement. Finally he had got the

engagement for to-night three days ahead. And she had as good as

promised to see him right off, immediately after that week-end in

Bloomfield. Stranger! Stranger in the city! That did not sound very

much as if she were a stranger. He wondered what she could have been

doing. She had met a good many people while she was doing Red Cross,

probably, people in the army--men--officers, now in civilian life. Why

not? And yet he had felt the least bit irritated and a little bit

lonely. For _his_ friends had scattered, it seemed. And then they had

not mattered much. And he had rather looked forward to the coming

summer with Mary Louise in town. Now he didn't so much. It was

foolish, too. There wasn't any reason for it. A man shouldn't pin his

resources down to one spot.

He washed, dressed, and then went to dinner at a dairy lunch around

the corner. The boarding place furnished breakfasts only. Then there

was an hour and a half to kill before he could go for her. She had a

room in a down-town apartment, not over three blocks away, and that

would take but a very short time. He wandered over to the public

square. Some old men were sitting on a row of iron benches lining the

sidewalk, facing the street. They surveyed him critically as he passed

by. He walked up and idly inspected the kiosk where the weather-bureau

reports were posted. He noticed it predicted continued fair. Then he

turned and walked in the street for about a block, gazing in shop

windows. There was nothing in any of them that he particularly wanted.

He stopped at a street corner and looked up and down both streets. A

few desultory pedestrians went walking hither and yon, leisurely, with

no apparent purpose. It was the lull of supper hour and there was an

orange glow that penetrated even down to the streets which were mere

canyons between sombre, artificial cliffs of masonry. To the west a

small patch of open sky glowed sulphurously through a smoke pall. A

city _was_ a poor place to spend time in--really live in, he thought.

And Mary Louise--he wondered if she thought so, too, she who had been

raised in the greenest of all green country, in the widest and

cleanest of spaces. Probably not. At least, it didn't look like it. A

city was a good place to work in. One could work anywhere--if the work

was all right. She had seemed keen about her work. She probably had

had a lot to do, getting things started. She'd probably not had much

time. He might have missed her during her leisure hours. It was

possible she was as desirous of some outdoors, of some clean air, some

blue sky, as he was.

Almost with the force of a decision he turned and walked back to the

square and sat down. He looked at the clock. It said five minutes

after seven. There was still an hour.

He sat and deliberately waited.

The time eventually passed, and before he had really gathered together

his thoughts into orderly array she was meeting him at the door of her

apartment, a little flushed, a little hurried, quite brisk and

apparently eager to be at the business at hand. There was also an air

of preoccupation as if she were revolving over in her mind some

previous matters of which the threads still remained untangled. In

this respect there was change. The old Mary Louise had been as open as

a wild rose, as freshly and sweetly receptive to whatever wind came

along. She had gathered complexity, was more serious, laughed less,

frowned more.

They walked along the street in the gathering darkness soberly, he

returning monosyllabic answers to the perfunctory questions which she

fired at him, brightly crisp. Like the questionnaire of a superior

officer he felt. Then for nearly a block they said nothing. Glancing

sidewise at her he caught the straight, almost grim line of her mouth

and the little pucker between her brows. As if realizing she was being

observed she suddenly asked:

"What are you doing out at the Works?"

Joe paused a moment before replying. "When I was in Texas," he began,

"out in the sticks, we had a flood, and the road from headquarters was

in danger of being washed away. Culverts too small. Had one nigger

standing on the bank of one stream by the head of a culvert catching

the sticks and brush and dragging them up on the bank so they wouldn't

clog up the hole." He spoke in a quietly reminiscent tone.

She turned and looked at him curiously. "But I said, 'What are _you_

doing _now_ at the Works?'"

"I know," he continued, in the same tone. "That's what I'm doing at

the Plow Factory. Keeping the water running."

She smiled, just a flash of a smile. "Doesn't sound so bad, even if

you are secretive about it. How did the nigger take care of his job?"

Joe looked up quickly. "Oh--he? He fell asleep. And then he fell in

the creek."

Mary Louise was watching him, waiting for him to finish. At last he

seemed to have got her entire attention. "And then?"

"Then he got pneumonia--and died."

They crossed the street. Up ahead the lights of the theatre gleamed

dazzling white. The crowd was getting almost too thick to permit

conversation.

"You don't like your job then?"

He flared into sudden unexpected defense of it. "Well, I haven't gone

to sleep on it yet."

They said no more, for the task of passing the ticket chopper and then

of getting settled in their seats was all absorbing. And then directly

the curtain rose and Joe found himself slipping into a delightfully

relaxed forgetfulness. He was being amused. His good humour was

returning. He got an occasional glance at Mary Louise, sometimes

during contagious gales of laughter that would sweep the audience, and

saw her smiling slightly, mostly with her eyes; and was puzzled, for

the humour was not that sort. Had he stopped to think, or had he been

more experienced, he would not have been thus puzzled, for he would

have realized that the sudden putting on of sophistication is always a

puzzling thing.

But he banished the question and gave himself up entirely to

enjoyment. And when the final curtain fell he rose to his feet with a

faint inner sigh of regret. It was with high good humour that he

gained his companion's side outside the theatre.

"We'll get a bite to eat down in the Rathskeller," he suggested gaily.

"No, Joe, let's not. This is enough for one evening." She turned as if

to start southward, toward home, but he seized her arm, laughing:

"Maybe it's enough for you, but it's not enough for me. Come on. Be a

sport. You've been dodging me long enough."

"Dodging you?" She was all hurt surprise as he hurried her along.

Joe's method was improving. "Well, come along, then--if you don't want

me to think so."

Mary Louise let it go at that. She came.

A revolving door that swept outward musty and yet alluring odours

swept them inward. They descended a flight of winding steps to a

subterranean anteroom of stone. Dim lights winked at them from stone

niches and from a cleft in the rock to one side a prim little maid in

a ruched white cap took Joe's hat. There should have been a troglodyte

attendant, instead. On the other side of swinging glass doors was much

clatter and laughter and the indistinct voice of a woman above a

rhythmic strumming and the bleat of a saxophone. The transition to

this other side was sudden and bewildering. The glimmer burst into a

glare, the dim echo swelled into a roar as the door opened, and Joe

stood blinking, asking for a table for two. As he threaded his way

between tables, past careening waiters swinging aloft perilous trays,

a girl in a crimson evening frock came wandering carelessly through

the aisle toward him, her hands clasped behind her back, her eyes

searching the crowd sitting about her. Her figure was short and pudgy

and so violently compressed into her crimson gown that she seemed to

be oozing out of a scanty chalice. She was singing a most provocative

song and, catching sight of Joe as he struggled along, face uptilted,

and, looking into his eyes most impudently, let him have the full

import of her words.

Joe gave her a deliberate, knowing wink. With a careless shrug she

moved away in search of more promising and sensitive material.

He passed, the toxine of gaiety mounting to his head, to a small table

tucked into a remote corner, where the waiter was holding out a chair

for him.

"Won't do, George," he said, refusing the proffered chair. "We can't

be buried way back here. We aren't dead ones, you know."

The waiter raised a deprecating shoulder but Mary Louise broke in,

"Oh, don't bother! This is all right, Joe." She had already seated

herself and was drawing off her gloves. Her face looked hot and weary,

and long wisps of hair were clinging damply to her temples.

"Wish we could have had a table over there," indicating two or three

vacant ones near the orchestra and the base of the jongleur's

operations. "We're out of it here. Well, at any rate, what are you

going to have?"

She turned from a weary inspection of adjoining tables. "Oh, anything.

Some lemonade, I suppose."

"Don't want to celebrate? This is our first party." His eyes and smile

were eager.

"No. Of course not, Joe. You know better than that."

"Two lemonades," he said to the waiter regretfully. Somehow it seemed

like a waste of atmosphere, a waste of fuel, pulling a rowboat with a

turbine--to be drinking lemonade in a place like this. Many bitter

similes occurred to him, but he banished them.

"The old girl looks like a rash, doesn't she?" he said, indicating the

singer who was wandering about amongst the tables in another part of

the room.

Mary Louise looked at him suspiciously. "How's that?"

"She's a-breakin' out."

Neither paid any further attention to this atrocity; she, because she

willed otherwise; he, because he was blissfully unaware.

But her apathy was noticeable. He made one or two violent efforts to

spur her flagging spirits and then, becoming touched by the contagion

of her reserve, lapsed himself into silence. They sat and sipped their

lemonades, thoughtfully inspecting their straws, dolefully ruminative.

Their little table was like a blot on a snow-white expanse of joy.

Joe came to the bottom of his glass and made a vicious noise in the

residue of cracked ice. He looked up to see how she might be taking

it and saw a gleam of pleasure pass across her face. It quickly

subsided and gave way to a look of preoccupation. He was watching her

intently now. And then she smiled and looked beyond him, stretching

her hand out in recognition. Someone touched the back of his chair. He

looked over his shoulder, saw a man's figure standing there, and then

he rose to his feet.

Dimly he heard Mary Louise's introduction. It was a Mr. Claybrook or

something like that.

"Won't you pull your chair up?" Joe invited.

Mr. Claybrook decided he would. He was a big man, a grave man, a man

of considerable poise, and possessed of whimsical crow's-feet in the

corners of his eyes. Mary Louise's apathy seemed to retire a little at

his approach.

"Glad to see you survived last night," he said to her with a faint

smile.

She flushed, and Joe felt a little roughness under his collar.

"How's the tea room coming? Roused out any hard drinkers yet?"

"Oh, we're not looking for that. We hope to make a few steady friends,

but we're depending on the ebb and flow." Her colour was mounting, and

had not Joe been so uncomfortable he would have seen how pretty she

was. But he sank deeper and deeper into a sullen and unreasoning

discomfort. The two had evidently had considerable in common before.

He felt awkward--knew of nothing to say. Claybrook, on the other

hand, was enjoying himself.

And apparently sensing the tension in Joe's mind, and seeking to

lighten it a bit, she volunteered:

"Captain Claybrook is going to help us put the tea room across. He was

one of our best little patrons in Camp Taylor."

Claybrook looked self-conscious; Joe even more embarrassed. And

suddenly a strange look crossed her face and she broke off her

explanation. Joe turned and looked in the direction toward which she

was staring wide-eyed.

And across the room, weaving through the labyrinth of tables and

bearing straight down upon them, came a strange apparition. With

unsteady gait, his hand stretched out in caution before him and a

watery smile upon his lips, came Uncle Buzz. An incongruously

picturesque figure amidst smartness and glitter. His head was as sleek

as ever and he had waxed the tips of his moustaches so that they stuck

out jauntily as did the tips of his black bow tie. But his jacket was

short and rusty and in need of pressing, of which fact he seemed

blissfully unaware. For, having sighted them, he was coming on

steadfastly, past pitfalls that yawned, with a smile upon his face.

Joe felt a peculiar exulting glow pass over him, whether at the sight

of a familiar, friendly face or for some less creditable reason.

Distress was plainly written on the face of Mary Louise. Claybrook

talked on, unconscious of what was coming.

And then Mr. Mosby drew up alongside and favoured them with an

elaborate bow from the centre of the aisle. A hurrying waiter, being

thus perilously presented with an unexpected hazard, made a desperate

swerve in mid-flight and menaced an adjoining table with the contents

of his tray. A glass crashed, a woman shrieked, and Uncle Buzz

serenely proceeded.

"Don't get up. Pray, don't get up," he said to Joe and Claybrook. "Saw

you from the door and merely came to pay my respects. Miss Mary

Louise, we miss you in the old town." He turned to her gracefully, and

Joe could catch the faint aroma of Bourbon, thus immediately

accounting to his own satisfaction for the easy poise and manner. Mary

Louise was lost. She watched Claybrook, who seemed amused, and Uncle

Buzz went on, turning his attention to Joe. "And by the way, Joseph,

if you can arrange to, your Aunt Loraine and I would like for you to

spend Saturday and Sunday with us."

Joe knew how much his Aunt Loraine would subscribe to this courtesy.

It meant work to do, that was all. But he was amused, felt singularly

light-hearted instead of embarrassed. Who can say he was depraved? His

voice was kind and cajoling as he replied:

"What are you doing in town, Uncle Buzz? Isn't the store open to-day?

Mr. Claybrook! Mr. Mosby!"

Uncle Buzz acknowledged the honour and then he turned on Joe a

dignified but hurt surprise. "I come to town quite frequently," he

said, clipping his words. "A Mr. Forbes of Boston wrote me to meet him

here about some saddle horses." This was said quietly but with proper

emphasis. Joe wondered how far it strayed from the truth. There were

only two saddlers left, he knew. Uncle Buzz was swaying slightly to

and fro and the little table was rapidly becoming the cynosure of all

eyes. Mary Louise looked about her desperately. Uncle Buzz, smiling

sweetly in the aisle, and threatening at any moment to shatter the

illusion by falling prostrate, was entirely ignorant of her distress.

The tables were reversed. Claybrook was silent; Joe held the centre of

the conversational stage.

Suddenly Mary Louise arose. "We must be going," she said. She paused,

gave them all an uncertain smile, and then she started rapidly for the

door. Old Mr. Mosby looked mildly surprised, then accepted the

situation as one too complex for his muddled brain. And Joe, after a

first flare of anger, followed her in silence, leaving Claybrook and

Uncle Buzz to contest the honours after him.

They parted in the lobby; Mary Louise with a bright spot on either

cheek and her lips set in their tightest line; Claybrook suave and

genial; Uncle Buzz bewildered and in some way wistfully regretful.

His watery blue eyes held in them an unanswered question that seemed

too ponderous for utterance. Joe was silent.

He took her home, along the deserted streets as quickly as possible.

For a long time neither spoke. Then it was some trivial amenity that

she uttered to which he made even shorter reply. Up in the elevator

they went, silently watching the floor. At the door of her apartment

he inclined his head. "Good-night," he said, without offering to shake

hands.

"What's the matter, Joe?" she asked, suddenly coming to herself and

realizing the oversight.

"Not a thing," he said. "It's perfectly all right with me." He turned

to go.

"Oh!" The exclamation was almost involuntary. She shrank back a little

into the shadow. "It was a nice party."

He made no reply but acknowledged this with another slight inclination

of the head. And then he started down the hall.

For a moment she stood and listened to the muffled sound of his

footsteps upon the thick hall carpet, and then she softly closed the

door.

CHAPTER IV

Joe had been right. There was a difference between an enterprise

backed by popular sentiment and practically the same elements with the

backing removed. In the first place, the patronage of the new tea room

was not so brisk and what there was was more skeptically critical.

There was not that carefree acceptance of things that overlooked

deficiencies in the light of the cause they existed under. In fact,

the helpful pressure that had held it all cemented had loosened. At

the end of the first week the two cooks suggested a raise in pay

amounting to ten dollars a month apiece. They did this in accord. And

then, contrary to what might be expected now that the war was over,

there was an insidious rising in the cost of everything, from table

napkins to canned asparagus. Mary Louise began to feel that profits

might not be so easy to estimate, after all.

Her coordinate, too, was constitutionally apathetic. She was a bovine

creature who positively refused to get ruffled over obstacles,

criticisms, or fate. Her name was Maida Jones. Two large pans of buns

had burned. Mary Louise, seeking to fix the responsibility, had failed

in doing so and was wracked at the prospect of frequently recurring

waste. Responsibility to be effective must be undivided. Maida had

only laughed. And Mary Louise removed herself from the scene of her

defeat and stood in the doorway of the tea room proper and stared

bleakly across a vista of deserted tables at a languid and heat-ridden

thoroughfare. It was going to be a "hit-or-miss" proposition, a

careless, slipshod affair--this tea room--unless she did something to

prevent it--and it was too hot. That was what was the matter. It was

too hot. She brushed back the hair from her face and slumped. Behind

her came the clatter of dishes. And then someone laughed, a coarse,

raucous laugh. Mary Louise shuddered. The post-office clock boomed six

and she suddenly realized that the day was over. There would be no

belated custom, for the service stopped at six and the room was empty.

Irritation gave way to discouragement. The day's receipts had been

slim indeed. Just then she noticed an automobile roll up to the curb

outside, and a man got out. She saw him start for the door, and for a

moment she pondered whether she would accomodate him or turn him away.

He opened the door. It was Claybrook.

"Hullo," he said, catching sight of her. "Afraid I'd be too late. Come

take a ride."

That was exactly what she wanted to do. "I can't," she said. "I have

to wait till they get through back there," indicating with a jerk of

the head those uncertain regions which had become suddenly quiet.

"Oh, let them take care of themselves. What is help for if you have to

watch it every minute? Come on. It's too hot to work any longer,

anyway."

She yielded. First she spent a moment or two before a mirror, tidying

herself up, feeling as she did so a little thrill of anticipation. And

then she stuck her head through the kitchen door and announced that

she was leaving. "Don't burn the whole place up, Maida," she cautioned

with a laugh as she caught sight of her sitting, humped forward in a

kitchen chair, fat elbows resting on a table, placidly viewing a vast

clutter of dishes that had not yet been put away.

Mary Louise escaped and clambered into the waiting car, into the

vacant seat beside the driver.

They whirled away, turned a corner sharply, and soon were leaving the

narrow, restricted streets of the down-town district which had been

pulsing and glowering with heat all day. She caught a look at

Claybrook in the seat beside her. He was as fresh and cool as though

he had not been exposed to the weather at all. Instinctively she

reached a restraining hand to her hair. It was blowing in wild

disarray. A sudden stretch of stately old houses sitting well back on

either side of the street, partly hidden by double rows of trees,

caused her fresh doubts as to the fitness of her attire. In her

shirtwaist and skirt she felt like an intruder.

A man from the sidewalk bowed to them. So busy was she with her hat

that she could not see who it was.

"There goes Wilkes," said Claybrook. "You remember Wilkes out at Camp?

Had charge of the Post Exchange."

She hoped she had escaped recognition. As if for protection she

slipped farther down in the seat and was less troubled by the wind.

The neighbourhood through which they were passing was becoming even

more fashionable, and aristocratic nurse-maids with their aristocratic

charges, alike in white, starchy, frilly things, were dotting the

sidewalks on either side of the street, supplying a live motif to a

prospect that might otherwise seem too orderly and remote. The lawns

were beautiful, close cropped and freshly green, and frequent

fountains sent a delightful mist across the pavement even to the

street. It was all very cool and refreshing. She began to see where

certain phases of city life might prove to be quite pleasant. The

modern fleshpots may seem alluring not alone in retrospect.

At length they passed from the asphalt paving on to a roadway of

yellow-red gravel, and up ahead, Mary Louise could see a stretch of

open country and beyond, a ridge of misty blue hills. There was a

double line of young maples on either side of the boulevard and the

fresh young leaves were rustling vigorously in the evening breeze as

they passed. Claybrook settled down in his seat us they gained the

boundary between paving and roadway with what seemed almost like a

sigh of relief. He turned upon his companion a satisfied smile,

meanwhile cutting down their speed appreciably.

"This is something like it," he said. "Pretty hot down your way

to-day?"

"Terrible," admitted Mary Louise. "I don't believe those walls will

get cool again before Christmas."

He smiled without answering, being occupied at the moment with a

little difficulty in the traffic. Directly he was free.

"Rare old boy--the other night," he said, still watching the road.

For a moment she did not catch the reference.

"Down in the Rathskeller," he added.

A hot rush of confusion struck her and she made no reply, but he went

on:

"I've often wondered what these people were like fifty years

ago--living on top of the world, best farm land anywhere, fine old

homes, lots of servants--nothing to do but enjoy life. Let it slip

away from them, didn't they? Must not have known what they had." He

had relaxed and was driving comfortably. And as though wrapped in a

mist of his own musing he continued, his eyes fixed on the road before

him, "I've often thought that if I ever got to the point where I

could afford it I would get me one of those old places--lot of

land--stock it up well, fix up the house. I'd like to leave something

like that to my family." He chuckled. "They might not appreciate it as

much as I do, however."

"They might," she replied. "They might have just as hard a time trying

to keep it as--as we have. Conditions might change again in the next

fifty years."

He turned and smiled at her. "Hadn't thought of that." The crow's feet

were thick about his eyes. "Who was the boy?--the one you were with

the other night."

Mary Louise flushed in spite of herself. "Joe--Joe Hooper. You've

heard me speak of him."

"Oh, yes. Lives in Bloomfield, doesn't he?"

"He did. Works here in town now--out at Bromley's."

He made no further reply, but somehow she felt an unuttered

conviction, on the part of the man there beside her, of Joe's loss of

heritage. And yet a certain compunction prevented her from making any

explanation--that it was not Joe's fault. There was a sort of sacred

inviolability about it. A hot little wave of feeling swept over her.

She had treated Joe miserably. She had yielded to her feelings like a

child. She ought to have been good sport enough to hide what she had

felt. But she hadn't. She was a snob. She had hoped to conceal that

she was not their sort--Joe and Mr. Mosby. In a sense, she had been

going back on her own people. As if she were trying to pass

them--trying to keep up with the procession. And yet that was exactly

what she was doing. But to show it!

The straight level path of the boulevard came abruptly to an end and

the road diverged to the left and mounted swiftly, skirting the

incline of a white, chalky hill densely covered with a tangle of scrub

oak, buckeye, cedar, and much underbrush. The slanting rays of the sun

were shut off abruptly as by a shutter and they rolled between

stretches of shade that were mistily fragrant and cool. Even the upper

air currents in the spaces above the road, up toward the sky, seemed

shadowy and unharried by the fierceness of the passing sunlight. The

motor settled down to the business of climbing, and once Claybrook

turned to her with a look of appreciation.

"Some park, this."

She hardly heard him, so intent was she on watching the road and the

occasional glimpses, through the tangle, of declivitous stretches

strewn with trunks of fallen trees and rank vegetation, down which the

wind went wandering with vague whisperings. They had been suddenly

transported out of the world of people into the world of hopes. The

city had been left leagues behind.

They made a quick, sharp turn to the right, the road almost doubling

back upon itself, and there was a steep grade for a short distance,

during which time Mary Louise caught herself leaning forward and

holding her breath in an instinctive impulse to help the labouring

car. And then they gained the top. Before them lay a tableland of many

acres thickly covered with trees. The grass, in the open spaces

between, was sparse, and there was much moss and lichen and drifts of

withered leaves, dried by the sun of more than one summer; and here

and there in the northern shadow of some gnarled trunk and in dipping

hollows the leaves were packed close in a damp and moulding compress.

Great streamers of wild grape-vine hung precariously from weary limbs

and swayed to and fro gently in the wind that came mounting up the

slope from the west and went dipping away to the eastward, leaving a

soft, shuddering wake. It was as if a mellower spirit hovered about

the old giant knob resting there, watching with its head all venerably

gray, though the sunlight ere it faded was elfishly splashing the

shadow with golden green, and little flecks of crimson and orange came

flashing through the tangle of branches as they passed, making light

mockery. And then the trees suddenly opened and they came out upon a

flat bare knoll, where the road, making a loop, signified that its

journey was over. Around the outside edge was a wall of loose stones

from which the hill sloped steeply in all directions, and before them,

stretching away for miles, lay the country through which they had

passed, till soft and green and gray in the distance. A huge smoke

pall, its feathery top drifting slowly eastward, hung over a

cup-shaped depression, and below it stretched a darker line, from

which occasionally emerged a solitary stack, or above which a church

spire, caught by an errant ray from the setting sun, would flash a

momentary beacon. Slowly the mantle seemed to fade and mingle with the

twilight, and even as they watched, a light flashed out, a single

pin-prick of a light, and then another and another, as night,

gathering in its intensity, swept over the valley, until it was met by

an ever-increasing challenge. It was like a myriad host of fairy

fire-flies, each diamond pointed, flickering, blinking, never still.

And there settled on the under side of the smoke pall a lurid glow as

of banked fires, waiting for the work of another day.

Mary Louise breathed a soft little sigh.

"It does get next to one, some way, doesn't it?" he said.

Rather to her thoughts she replied aloud: "To think of all those

people living there, almost in the grasp of the hand. Think of them

moving, scurrying about among those lights. It makes one feel it would

be so easy to do things for them, move them about at one's will--from

here. And yet----" She was silent a moment, thinking. "And yet even to

be able to raise one's head above it all, to see--and be seen!

Well----"

"That's what I mean to do." He spoke almost as if she were not there,

and his voice, which was as though disembodied, and jarring a bit with

its resonance, brought her back to the present.

"It's a hard thing to do and I've come to think it takes sometimes a

lifetime, but--it can be done." He had turned and she could feel his

warm breath in her ear. There was a note of assurance in his words

and, as she watched, a change came over the scene before her and it

all seemed like a huge graying blanket punched full of tiny, bright

flat holes. Something had receded, escaped back into the darkness

behind it all.

She made no reply.

"I wanted to tell you and it's about as good a time as any. You may be

needing some help. It's not all so easy down there. And--well, if you

need any help--make the way any easier for you--why, don't hesitate to

call on me."

"That's good of you," she replied, and wondered at the lack of warmth

in her own voice. "Perhaps I shall." But she could not help feeling

that in some way she had seen what she had seen--alone.

They sat a little longer in silence, and then Mary Louise straightened

in her seat and called to him briskly:

"We _must_ be going. Why, it must be eight o'clock. What have I been

thinking of?"

"That's what I'd like to know," he laughed.

"Come, take me home, man. Maida will think--all sorts of things."

"You don't have to answer to her, do you?"

"No. But let's go."

He stooped over and switched on the lights and immediately two long,

ghostly streamers went searching out across the wall and rested

lightly in the tops of some ragged trees on the slopes, bringing them

grotesquely into focus, while myriads of tiny motes danced down the

twin circular paths off into space. Directly there was a roar of the

engine, with an occasional sputtering cough--for the night air was

cool--and then Claybrook's voice again:

"There really isn't any great hurry. We can stop at the Gardens at the

foot of the hill and get a bite to eat."

"No, not to-night. Thank you ever so much."

"But why not? We needn't hurry then. It's a pretty good place." He

seemed insistent, waiting, stooped there over the steering wheel.

"No," she said again. "I must get home. Maida will be waiting for me

and I've some work to do. And besides, I don't want to go anywhere

looking like this. I'm a fright, I know."

He muttered something to himself as he threw the car into gear, and

they went whirling around the circle of the road in reckless disregard

for the menace of the rock wall. It was pitch dark as they made their

way across the level top of the knob, with occasional shadows of

spectral limbs projecting their silhouettes against the sky, and once

the jagged edge of a trailing creeper swished close to her head as

they whirled along. Above the noise of the motor there was not a

sound. Claybrook suddenly laughed:

"Some of the niggers down at the mill say this old hill is haunted."

She clung to the hand-grip of her seat, her mind filled with a tangle

of impressions, with a shrinking from the sepulchral depths below

them, and an effort to recall in detail that vision of the city.

"I have to shake it off before I can be any more good. It's like being

moon-struck." He took another sharp curve at reckless speed, the tires

grinding on the gravel, the brakes screeching.

Mary Louise held her breath for a moment and waited. And then she

touched him lightly on the elbow. "Oh, please!"

He laughed and for a short time was more careful, slowing down at the

curves which came every hundred yards or so. "Feels like they're

coming after me. Like to get down to the level road again." He made a

quick swerve to avoid a pointed rock. "Must have been great, driving

to the top of this with a horse and buggy. Not for me."

And they were off again as swiftly as before. Twice they grazed the

projecting roots of trees on the outside edge of the road by the

scantiest of margins and once a board in a culvert snapped ominously

as they swept across it, and Claybrook laughed aloud. And Mary Louise,

wide-eyed, sat in a frenzy of preparedness, her gaze glued to the

winding, ever-dipping road in fascination.

Suddenly a shadow seemed to leap out upon them, out of the

darkness--the shadow of a man. There was a moment's hideous clamour of

the brakes, a sickening swerve of the machine, a man's shout, a sudden

instant's flash of gleaming trunks brought sharply into focus, and

then a slow, gradual letting down of her side of the car, inch by

inch. She grasped the arm beside her to keep from falling, and then

all was still.

A moment later she could see that they were balanced on the edge of a

culvert; to her right was the darkness; up ahead, the lights were

glaring impotently off into space. And then she realized that an arm

was encircling her waist in an iron grip and that the motor was still

thrumming and that someone was running around in front of the car and

then peering off down the slope where they tipped so perilously. These

things came to her in just that order. And directly she was on the

road, trembling just a little and feeling very helpless, and

Claybrook's voice somewhere over in the darkness was giving

directions, sharp, irritated. To her knowledge he had not uttered a

word during it all. She could hear them somewhere over there crashing

about in the underbrush, an occasional word, an occasional suppressed

shout. Very unreal it was, with the stars shining faintly overhead,

the black shadows all around, and those two shafts of light poking out

into nowhere. She walked back to the inside edge of the road and sat

down, and bye-and-bye she felt quieter. It had been such a childishly

foolish thing to do and so useless. The minutes passed and she began

to wonder what time it was getting to be. And then she felt a growing

irritation and suddenly she was hungry. All she could hear was the

threshing about of the brush and the sound of heavy dragging. Once she

went around the rear of the car and peered down. She could dimly see

that the rear wheel had passed completely over the brink, and below it

lay a pile of sticks and brush. A little more and they might have

rolled over, down into the darkness. She returned to her seat by the

side of the road.

Just like a little boy he was, she thought--reckless, irresponsible,

"full of the fullness of living." And his tone, when she had spoken of

the dead-level of life in the city below them and the problem of

raising one's head--"That's what I mean to do"--had seemed so like the

confident tones of a child on the threshold of life. Were we all like

that, after all--lifted up for a moment so that we could see;

blundering forward the next, blindly, into pitfalls of our own making?

His very offer of help, there on the hilltop, had been naive, and yet

she was troubled by it. Why was he thrusting his stick into the still

waters of her life? And yet she had felt very much alone and in need

of the realization of another presence.

And then suddenly she realized why and how it was she liked him. She

liked to think of him as standing by, liked the realization of his

strength, his confidence. He was big, he was good-looking, and there

was a tonic freshness about him. He was good as a friend. And he

needed watching over, needed guiding, himself. That made it all the

better. And then she felt hungry again. But she was no longer

irritated.

The roar of the motor roused her from her musings. There was a

ripping, grinding noise and she could see the outline of the car move,

sink back, and then lurch forward again. There was another whirring

and grinding and then Claybrook's triumphant shout. She rose to her

feet and walked over to him. They had succeeded. The car was standing,

all four wheels on the hard, level surface, the engine racing like

mad.

"Hop in," Claybrook called to her a bit shortly.

She complied and he reached forward to throw in the gear, when the man

walked around in front of the car and held up a restraining hand. She

saw then, for the first time, that he was a park policeman.

"Let's have your name before you go, friend," he said.

"But what for? There's no harm done. I thought I made it all right

with you?"

"You did--with me. But then you're pretty dangerous on these roads

and I'll have to turn you in so that they can be looking out for you."

Claybrook sullenly complied. And then, throwing the car into gear,

they slipped quickly out of sight. After they had rounded the curve,

he turned suddenly to Mary Louise. "That's a new one on me. I tipped

him for helping me get the car out, and then he turns and takes my

name. You can't count on anybody these days--ever since the war."

"I think he has a sense of humour," she replied, laughing softly.

As they passed the road-house he suggested once again that they stop

for a bite to eat, but upon her refusal he made no comment. The night

was no longer clear; gathering clouds on the western horizon were

gradually spreading across the sky, and as they crossed the line on to

the asphalt paving again, it began to rain, a few scattering drops. At

which she teased him about his altered driving. He laughed but made no

answer.

But the shower did not come and directly they drew up at the curb

outside her apartment.

"Don't stop," she said. "Don't bother. You must get in before the

rain." She felt singularly good humoured.

"I'm sorry I made such a mess of things," he began clumsily,

"and--and--you were pretty decent about it." It was a concession, but

she could see he was rankled about something.

"I hope they won't fine you too much," she called after him as he

started off. And then she walked thoughtfully into the hallway and

stepped into the elevator and was carried swiftly upward.

"You've got to make allowances for them all," she decided mentally.

"Yes," she added force to that decision, half aloud.

"What d'you say, Miss Mac?" inquired the elevator boy.

"I said, 'Seventh,'" she smiled at him.

She was met at the door by Maida with her hair in curl papers and a

most prodigious yawning and rubbing of eyes. The ideal night life for

Maida was that spent comfortably in bed.

"Thought you'd eloped," she ventured sleepily and then turned and

shuffled off to the inner room. At the door she called over her

shoulder, "There's a note someone left for you--about two hours ago."

Mary Louise looked on the table and, lying on a pile of magazines and

newspaper supplements, was a plain, thin, white envelope. She picked

it up and looked at it curiously, wondering from whom it could be.

There was no address. She tore it open and read, and as she read she

reached over one hand and steadied herself against the table. The note

was from Joe, and laconic:

"They phoned me this evening your Aunt Susie had

had another stroke. They said you had better come."

That was all it said. There was no expression of regret. There was no

offer of help. She had a sudden rush of anxiety. But behind the

anxious feeling was one of wonder and a tiny one of hurt. She laid the

letter down upon the table and slowly and thoughtfully took off her

hat.

CHAPTER V

Things had changed for Joe. It was as though he had been told that he

had not amounted to much, that what he had come from had not amounted

to much, and that in all probability he would never amount to much.

Just how much had actually been suggested to him, and how much he had

supplied out of the whole cloth of his imagination it is doubtful if

even he could have said.

It was not the weather certainly. For the morning of the second day of

May opened wide with promise. There was a lightness about the air and

a clarity as Joe emerged from his lodging house from the ready-made

breakfast which they doled out as though breakfasts were just like

linen and towels and soap. The day would have made countless

insinuations to a normal man. To some, it said golf; to others, a

motor trip out to where a plethora of such bounties as it suggested

might be available; and to others less fortunate--why, there was the

"Ferry" just opening to hesitant crowds, with its band stand, its

scenic railway, its forty-five minutes of vaudeville that was anything

but mentally exhausting. It was an eloquent morning. But Joe turned a

deaf ear.

His walk to the factory lay for a short distance along a pretty little

park where, when the weather was proper, squirrels and babies and

numerous other smaller, crawly things were wont to mingle together in

democratic unconcern. But to him, this morning, it was just so much

pavement.

He punched the time clock viciously as he passed through the office

lobby and barely escaped collision with Mr. Boner as he turned the

corner of the partition en route to his desk. Mr. Boner merely

grunted. He bore in his hand a sheaf of orders for the mailing desk.

He believed in getting an early start.

Joe sat down before his desk and gazed listlessly out of the window.

The day arose before him in prospect, drab, desolate, and dreary. High

up overhead, through the dingy panes, he could see the little fleecy

clouds floating about in peaceful unconcern. May was a slack month.

And at its end came June--June, with its four weeks' inventory period

wherein each stick and stone of the entire plant, each ten-penny nail,

each carriage bolt, would have to be listed, valued, and carried into

an imposing total. It meant working late into the night under a

pitiless glare with handkerchief tied about one's neck like a washer.

It meant cramped fingers, and hot dry eyes, and a back that ached when

it didn't feel crawly with infinitesimal bugs, and bugs that bumped

and buzzed and then fell sprawling across one's paper. Each item had

to be entered upon the sheet. Each item had to be valued. Discounts

had to be figured, extensions had to be made, figures had to be

checked meticulously, and the whole thing eventually bound up in six

or eight huge volumes which were then allowed to languish in the

Company safe. He had been through it before. And the thought of it was

intolerable. This was June. June and inventory and Mr. Boner seemed to

him to be cut from the same piece. For neither did Mr. Boner escape.

Instead, he came earlier, stayed later, and worked with more furious

rapidity than ever. And he was Mr. Boner's successor--that is, if he

hit the ball and worked hard enough to deserve it. The thought of the

little boy whose mother gave him a nickle every time he took his

castor oil manfully came to his mind as he sat and gazed out the

window. When asked what he did with the nickles, the Spartan youth had

replied: "Buy more castor oil with it." Joe wearily dragged one of his

stock ledgers from the rack and opened it.

All that day, as he made his entries and checked his totals, came the

thought, "Why am I doing this? What is it all for?" He was feeling the

double edge of scorn no less keenly because only implied. Why wasn't

he doing a man's work? Why was he humbly taking his turn in a servile

and remote succession, where death's was the only hand that moved the

pawns? Why had he come back to it? He dared not confess the reason.

The best he could do was admit to himself he had been mistaken. The

rose tints had vanished from his sky and the path he had chosen was

disclosed in all its drab ugliness. He had chosen it fatuously. The

rose tints had been of his own making. He viciously snapped his mind

shut on the thought. For a while he would feverishly clamp his

attention to his work, while outside the sky continued serenely blue,

and the breeze that drifted through his window was languorous and

soft. But the work was too light. There was not enough of it, nor was

it of the nature that demanded his absorbed concentration. He thought

of Mr. Mosby, the unwitting cause of it all. And yet he did not blame

Uncle Buzz in the least. Rather he sided with him. They were both

inferior animals--not to be mentioned in the same breath with

progress, thrift, success.

Uncle Buzz had his troubles, too. He was bookkeeper of the general

store in Bloomfield, but he had never got to the point where he was

absolutely sure of his trial balances. Nor had Aunt Loraine ever got

to the point where she was absolutely sure of him, and he had had only

the slightest hand in the management of what was left of the farm. The

farm was Aunt Loraine's. But she always took what was necessary from

what Uncle Buzz got from the store to make both ends meet on the farm,

and that was, of late, becoming an ever-increasing distance. Uncle

Buzz felt a proprietor's interest. He liked to speak about it as "his

farm." Uncle Buzz would have loved to raise horses, thoroughbreds and

saddlers, but for obvious reasons that had been impossible. But he

went his jaunty way, waxing his moustaches, squandering his money on

fancy neckties, taking his surreptitious nip with all the gay bravado

of thirty years before, and getting seedier and seedier. He was a

dandelion withering on the stalk. He had long since given up hope of

being anything else but bookkeeper in the "Golden Rule," and indeed it

was only the stock which he held in that institution that insured him

the place such as it was. For Uncle Buzz was with age becoming more

unreliable. His mind would play queer tricks on him. The figures would

occasionally assume a demonic elusiveness and he could no longer carry

his liquor with his former assurance. While outwardly he was the same

suave, debonair old beau, he was beginning to have inner doubtings and

despairs. And Joe, who had, as it were, taken up the pen when he had

cast aside the sword, became for him a potential straw adrift on the

downward current.

Uncle Buzz's message in the Rathskeller the night before had been

cryptic to the others but plain enough to Joe. Uncle Buzz was in

trouble again. Trial balance, maybe. There was no telling. As Joe

finished footing up a long column of figures he smiled. It meant

another trip to Bloomfield on Saturday. And Saturday was the day after

to-morrow. Thus the day wore on.

On Saturday, which was a day of the same pattern as its predecessors,

at eleven o'clock Joe quietly rose from his desk, took his hat, and

unostentatiously walked out of the office. He punched the time clock

gently so that it would attract the attention of only the most

observant of clerks, and hurried away, feeling that this repeated

dereliction was bound to bring him some notice, even if the first

offense had not. But for some reason he felt singularly indifferent.

An hour later he had forgotten it all. The dumpy accommodation train

was bumping itself along at a great rate, puffing stertorously up the

long grade past "Sassafras Hill," and then swinging itself around the

curves that followed the river so desperately that passengers and

freight alike--for it was a combination train as well as

accommodation--were like to be flung from it, hurled into space as

useless encumbrances to its desperate need of getting there. It would

rush along madly for a mile or two, then give a wild shriek and stop,

and after a great puffing and snorting, start up again.

It was such an enthusiastic train that Joe could not long escape the

contagion of its enthusiasm. Ten miles out they came into a stretch of

rolling meadow where the shadows of trees were like purple splotches

upon the shimmering mist of the grass. A high wind had arisen that set

the countless blades vibrating so that each bit of sun-swept meadow

was naught but a silverish blurr, with the tree tops above it tossing

wildly about. A little girl, holding open a gate for an old man in a

buggy behind a placid old white horse, was all fluttering ribbon ends,

and as they passed, her sunbonnet was torn from her grasp and flung

over the fence, far afield. Joe could see her running after it as they

rounded a curve out of sight.

At twelve thirty-five they reached Guests where Joe alighted. He was

the only passenger of like mind, and aside from the station master who

made a hurried exchange of sundry small express packages and mail

there was no one at the station but a fat little old man in a brown

derby and a red sweater, and with a very dirty face. This latter

gentleman accosted Joe with a warning gesture, lifting his arm and

pointing to the sky, and at the same time giving him a significant

look, and then scuttling over to a disreputable motor car that stood

beside the station platform. Arriving there he twisted his fat neck

half around to see if his prey was following him, and being thus

assured, clambered in. The car was very aged and trembling from some

violent internal disorder, while the top was bellying off sidewise

with a great flapping of loose straps and curtain ends till it seemed

doubtful if the whole thing might hold together for another minute.

"High wind," suggested the Jehu, in a fat wheezy voice as Joe crawled

into the seat beside him. Joe agreed without qualification. The old

man paused a minute, gave him a sober, reflective look of far-away

intensity, and then suddenly turned and spat precariously into the

wind.

"Bloomfield?" he suggested with increased lightness of manner.

"Bloomfield," Joe agreed again. It was a pleasant bit of procedure,

invested with the dignity of a formula, for there was no other town

within a radius of many miles and no other road over which such

traffic was possible. Still it had to be gone through with.

They started with a rush, being ably seconded by a more severe gust of

wind than usual, and for eight miles it was a stalemate between the

wind and the motor as to which could make the most noise. But in spite

of it all Joe was enjoying it. There was a freedom in the uproar, in

the wildly tossing tree tops, in the white clouds that went scudding

high overhead. He had an insane desire to fling his hat high up in the

air, as they rolled along, and see how far the wind would carry it.

At length they arrived. Out of courtesy, perhaps, the wind abated;

perhaps it was because nothing boisterous would be tolerated along

those silent old streets. But as they passed the tavern, one green

shutter could be seen hanging by one hinge, moving softly to and fro,

and against the iron stair railing of the meeting house an old,

yellowing newspaper clung for a moment and then dropped to the

pavement. A very old man in a linen suit, followed by an old hound,

was going through the door as they passed, and he pivoted on his stick

and watched them. Here was the very essence of stability.

Reaching the central square, the driver swung his car in a majestic

arc around the traffic post in the centre of the street and drew up at

the curb in front of the post-office. There was a liberal sprinkling

of small motors of the same general classification as the one in which

they were arriving, parked with their noses headed toward the curb, at

an angle. Uncle Buzz's figure suddenly appeared, hurrying from behind

one of these, his face set in an earnest frown. He had evidently seen

them from the "Golden Rule," diagonally opposite, and had come the

most direct route, through the traffic.

"Well, Joseph, this is a surprise."

This, thought Joe, might mean anything. Either his Aunt Loraine had

not been apprised of his expected arrival, or perhaps the old man had

already extricated himself from his trouble.

"Any bags?"

"No. No bags." Joe was still holding the out-stretched hand of

welcome.

Uncle Buzz turned to the driver and dropped a coin in that worthy

gentleman's greasy palm as it lay inertly on the seat, beside him.

"That will be all," he said with great dignity.

The driver gave him a long look, heavy lidded--a critical look, a

deeply thoughtful look--sniffed, and then turned to Joe, "Goin' back?"

he asked shortly, as though there were nothing more now for any one to

stay for.

"No," said Joe. "Not to-day."

The driver pondered this in his heart for a moment, came to a sudden

decision, sniffed again, and turned his back on them both and

proceeded to stretch himself out as far as the narrow confines of the

seat would permit. Business was apparently over for the day.

Uncle Buzz led Joe across the street to the busy side. The contrast of

their figures was striking, for Joe was over a head taller, and loose

where Uncle Buzz was stiff.

Mr. Mosby turned at the curbing and with a confidential air: "We'll

just get a bite to eat in here," indicating a tiny little lunch room

crammed in between two ramshackle old frame buildings. "Your Aunt

Loraine was a bit indisposed this morning."

This established one conclusion. He was at least not expected at home.

More than that, he could not decide without further premises.

They occupied stools at a high counter covered with oilcloth. Uncle

Buzz ordered rolls and coffee. Joe took rolls and coffee. There was a

period of silence as they waited.

Directly Mr. Mosby began talking in a low tone: "It's a rather

fortunate thing you came up this week-end, Joseph. I was rather afraid

you mightn't." He paused and Joe, while he felt reasonably sure of

just what would come next, listened with polite interest.

"I've been troubled with frightful headaches this past week," he

continued, "so severe that I could scarcely see the open page before

me."

Joe murmured his regret over the cup's brim.

The old man paused and seemed to consider. Then hesitantly continuing:

"If you could spare an hour or two this afternoon----?"

"Surely I can, Uncle Buzz. Easiest thing you know."

The old man breathed deep and long and set down his coffee cup. "It is

a trifling matter of some forty-six dollars. Would you like to go out

to Montgomery's this afternoon? He has a couple of two-year-olds that

he will be shipping down for the Derby now pretty soon."

"I'd be very pleased to, Uncle Buzz."

And thus was the matter broached, and the matter accepted, without any

bald reference to necessity, without the slightest violation to the

tenets of hospitality. No reference was made to a previous

understanding. Joe's visit was established on a purely social basis,

and as such it would be presented to Mrs. Mosby, whose penchant for

alarm might thus escape stimulus.

They finished their lunch hurriedly and made their way across to the

"Golden Rule," where Uncle Buzz led his charge with swift, silent

steps back to the little private office in the rear of the store. Once

inside, the door was closed and the books quickly opened upon the

table. "They are always a bit impatient for the balance this time of

the year," Mr. Mosby offered in explanation.

An hour's work sufficed to find the trouble. It was in the carrying

forward of a single account. Once found, the rest was very simple, and

at three o'clock Uncle Buzz slammed the ledger shut with an air of

complete satisfaction, walked confidently through the door into the

adjoining office with his little sheaf of papers, and returning

reached for his hat. "Burrus is out," he said crisply. "We won't

wait."

Joe likewise reached for his hat.

At the door the old man turned, and with a reminiscent smile and in a

confidential tone, "There is a lot of personal jealousy in this firm."

Joe expressed no surprise.

"He's just been elected deacon in the church." His old eyes began to

twinkle. "Great changes can take place in a man's habits once you

hitch him up with apron strings. His wife has never thought so much of

Loraine. And now he doesn't think so much of me." He chuckled. "We

were raised together, and I have a good memory." He opened the door

and walked slowly toward the front of the store. It was empty of

customers. A clerk stood leaning idly across a glass counter of

notions looking into the street. Uncle Buzz proceeded calmly on,

giving the clerk a pleasant nod. "She came from a farm back in the

county. They say she had never seen a railroad until she was

twenty-one years old."

The clerk inspected Joe thoroughly and critically and made no sign of

having heard anything. And still Joe felt a bit dubious; indiscretion

is like other normal weapons: it kills when one doesn't know it is

loaded.

But Mr. Mosby was in rising spirits. They emerged to the street and

turned the corner into the less populous thoroughfare, known commonly

throughout Bloomfield as Pearl Street, and there they came upon Uncle

Buzz's horse and buggy, standing as if carved from one and the same

block of immutable immobility. Even the flies found little of

excitement in lighting about the front section of the combination, and

only one or two were buzzing about in the general neighbourhood in a

dispirited manner.

The horse opened his eyes and lifted one ear as Uncle Buzz climbed in

the buggy and took up the lines. But being complacent and particularly

indisposed to anything as much like effort as resistance, the starting

was quite without ceremony.

Eventually, and not too much so, they left the city streets, and soon

were jogging down a winding little lane of the softest, yellowest

earth imaginable. On either side, between the edge of the roadside and

the snake rail fence, was a little bank all a-tangle with blackberry

bushes, and here and there, with its roots protruding out into space,

a gaunt and bare thorn tree or an occasional walnut thrusting its

branches over the road. Beyond, the fields lay in cool, serrated rows,

deep brown and freshly fragrant. The woodland which hung about in the

background beyond the fields would occasionally sweep down and cross

the road, and then would come a stretch of checkered shade on the

yellow earth, and the lifting, expectant sound of high wind in top

branches. And sometimes, in the heart of such an arm of woodland, the

old horse's hoofs would echo hollow on the warped and mellowing boards

of a tiny bridge, and there would be a momentary slip and gurgle of

water underneath, on down through the ferns. Joe felt steeped in calm.

Mr. Montgomery was not at home. Nor were the horses. They found they

were a week late. An old Negro whom they encountered just within the

paddock gate so informed them: "Yessuh. They done took 'em down t'

Louisville, las' Monday."

They left him scratching his kinky gray pate in meditation.

Uncle Buzz was disappointed. The little excursion was thus deprived

of its sparkle. There was a something about going out to see

racehorses----Well, at any rate, Uncle Buzz was disappointed. He

showed it on the way home. Perhaps the fading sunlight, the

lengthening shadows, had something to do with it. And the wind, too,

that had come with the morning and kept up its bluster all day, had

died to a whisper, so that a cluster of last year's corn-stalks

standing in a fence corner were merely indifferently waggling. It may

have been just a reflection of mood, but as they were rounding the

brow of the hill above Bloomfield and could see the dip of the meadows

to the creek and the white fences and outbuildings of the Fair Grounds

away off to the right, the old horse stopped and gently switched his

tail. And Uncle Buzz let him stop.

"Do you know," he said, and his voice was reminiscent and uncertain,

"I've been thinking lately we ought to sell the place and move to

town."

Joe looked up at him curiously. "Why do you think that, Uncle Buzz?"

Mr. Mosby pondered, as the horse, feeling perhaps the slight pricks of

conscience, resumed his way at an imperceptible walk. "Well," he said,

"this country is not what it used to be. All the other towns, Guests,

Fillmore--all the rest of them--are on the railroad or interurban.

They have the advantage of us."

Joe was watching him unperceived. The old man's face had lost its

aggressive jauntiness. There was an odd pucker about the brows. His

mouth, above the well-trimmed goatee, seemed small and indecisive. Joe

could see the clear blue veins on the back of the hand as it

listlessly held the lines.

"Business has been a bit slack this past year. Seems like it never got

over the war. And prices are high, too. Can't get a nigger to do a

day's work for you for less than three dollars now," he added

fiercely. And then lapsing into his former vein again, "I wonder----"

Joe waited. "Wonder what, Uncle Buzz?"

The sun made one of its perceptible drops, just as though its setting

was a matter of notches. A little cool breeze came up to meet them

from the creek bottom as they moved slowly downward.

"Why couldn't you get me something to do in Louisville? How about the

Plow Company? They must employ a great many men." He laughed a bit

shrilly. "I've always thought I would like to live in Louisville."

Joe was aghast. He felt as if it might be some old lady demanding of

him pink tights and a place in the front row of the ballet. However,

he checked the exclamation that rose to his lips. But for a moment he

did not know what to say. Uncle Buzz--wanting to go to work at

Bromley's!--An ancient and decrepit Whittington!

"But you've been here so long, Uncle Buzz!" he managed at length.

"So I have. All the more reason. I'm getting in a rut. Besides, I'm

getting tired of Burrus. Narrow-minded scoundrel! He throws out hints

about Zeke bringing me my whiskey over from Fillmore. As if it were

any of his business!" He subsided and silently contemplated the depths

of Burrus' degradation.

Joe laughed softly and at the same time felt the sharp little warning

edge of an intuition. Uncle Buzz was slipping, and he knew it.

"I wouldn't be in a hurry," he suggested at length, "Bromley's is full

up. All those men coming back from the army, you know--I'll keep an

eye open for you if you want me." It was most incongruous, the

patronizing air that had crept into his voice, the tone that

invariably greets the unemployed, wherever or whoever he be.

Uncle Buzz brightened. "Do," he said.

They drove through the gate and up to the house. Aunt Loraine

profusely reproached her husband for not advising her of Joseph's

arrival. "It's a shame. Here at the last minute. You might have at

least sent me word, Bushrod."

"We had to go out in the country," Uncle Buzz replied with decision.

And so they supped meagrely on fried chicken and rice and gravy and

hot biscuits and coffee. And afterward they sat in the high-ceilinged

back parlour, in candlelight, and watched the glow die from the

western sky. And Aunt Loraine asked him about the "season" in

Louisville, and once she asked him about Mary Louise. And bye-and-bye

Uncle Buzz began to nod just like a sleepy little boy, and with the

prospect of a long, well-filled to-morrow, Joe suggested that they go

to bed. And then there was a moment's pausing upon the threshold of a

yawning black door beyond which things smelled mustily sweet, with

dusty shadows that crept across the matting from a shielded lamp; and

later a most delicious yielding of one's self to the cool envelope of

soft white sheets, and a moment's wide-eyed staring at the ceiling;

and then forgetfulness.

Sometime later--it seemed hours--Joe was awakened by the clatter of an

automobile somewhere beneath his window. For a moment he lay still and

wondered and then, the bustle continuing, only in a much subdued and

muffled manner, he got up and in his bare feet walked over to the

window across the matting and looked out. He saw an oil lantern

sitting on the edge of the side steps, and he saw the open screen

door. And then from a black shadow a short distance away, behind the

old lilac bush he remembered so well, he saw a figure emerge, carrying

a glass jug. The figure was Zeke's, stooped over and shuffling, in the

same old peaked cap he had always worn. And in the jug was the

apotheosis of Mr. Mosby's contempt for Mr. Burrus, and as it passed

the light it gleamed and sparkled with a deep golden malevolence. And

hearing steps on the porch, and voices, and fearing lest he might be

seen spying at the window, Joe crept back to bed. And directly he

heard the familiar roaring clatter of a car starting up somewhere down

below there in the darkness, and after a while--silence. He fell into

a deep and satisfying sleep.

CHAPTER VI

Mary Louise had the power of concentration over her determinations as

well as over her desires. Once having decided on a course she could

keep herself driving at it without ceasing. If she made a digression,

it was with eyes set on the goal, and for the reason that to so

digress was to find a more facile path and save time in the end. Her

past attainments had been gained apparently without effort, for in the

little world she had known at Bloomfield all had been hers to do with

as she desired. And then had come the eighteen months in Louisville,

with its awakenings, its gradual undermining of her old standards and

conceptions, and its whetting of the keen edge of her desire.

She had been made to see her facts in another light. Those things that

had been wont to be considered as axioms and irrefutable postulates in

her daily acceptance were suddenly seen as the most ephemeral

hypotheses. The desirability of Bloomfield and the lustre about the

name "McCallum"--two rocks upon which she had builded the edifice of

her confidence--were found of a sudden to be but shifting sands,

hard-packed enough on the surface, but subjected to the most

insidious and devastating undertow. Many a weaker spirit would have

thrown up his arms and dived with desperation overboard in search of

solid footing. But not so Mary Louise. She had a momentary whirl at

negation and then a firm and ever-increasing determination to build

her own footing. If Bloomfield and the McCallum family were not all

they should be, she would make them so, to her own satisfaction at

least. Money was the one thing needed, she soon found or thought she

found, and money was the thing she was determined to get, enough of it

to accomplish her purpose. When she had started the tea room she had

not had the slightest idea that she could possibly fail to do just

exactly what she wanted.

As she read the note that Joe had left for her, the news of Miss

Susie's illness caused her temporary distress. But her mind did not

dwell for long on the distressing part of it, but got busy with the

problem in hand, went into conference with itself over it, analyzed

and dissected it to its complete satisfaction, and then put out the

resulting dicta on the bulletin board of her consciousness. The

particular "Thou must" was in this case "Go to Bloomfield." And

inasmuch as Mary Louise never under any circumstances thought of

disregarding these highly accurate mental dicta, go to Bloomfield she

did. She went the following morning, which was Friday. And it must be

said that in spite of the attention which was focused on the

immediate difficulty before her, which was, "What to do with Miss

Susie," her mind kept straining at this barrier for continued and

reassuring glimpses of the ultimate goal ahead. Still, she loved her

aunt, and the realization of her suffering was to her genuine pain.

As she entered the sitting-room door, she found the little old lady

propped in a rocking chair just inside the doorway with a patchwork

quilt across her lap, tucking her in. There was no appreciable change.

She was as yellow, as parchment like as ever. Her eyes perhaps were

brighter; indeed they seemed almost to have a heat of their own as

Mary Louise stooped to kiss the cheek held up to her.

"Why didn't you let me know sooner?" she chided.

"There was no reason for you to come at all," Miss Susie responded

briskly. "Some people haven't enough questions to decide for

themselves. Have to go about hunting for other people's problems."

"But you weren't going to sit up here and not let me know anything

about it?" Mary Louise took off her hat and came over to the rocking

chair, toward which she dragged another, and seated herself. She

reached out and took one of the little blue-veined hands and stroked

it gently. "You weren't going to sit up here and let me know nothing

about it? That's not what you promised."

Miss Susie's fixed, inexorable expression did not change. But she was

pleased--was feeling softer. Unconsciously she liked Mary Louise to

assume that patronizing, superior air toward her. She said nothing and

began to rock softly to and fro, staring through the doorway.

Mary Louise continued the gentle stroking. Bye-and-bye she ventured

softly, "You're right sure you're feeling all right now? What did the

doctor say?"

Miss Susie turned on her, mouth snapping shut. "Doctor! Who said I had

to have a doctor?" The look in her eyes, as she turned them full upon

the girl, was one in which defiance mingled with alarm and struggled

for mastery. For Miss Susie had waged a long and losing warfare with

disease and she quailed before the emblems of surrender if not from

the enemy itself.

Mary Louise for the moment let it go at that. After the air had

appreciably cooled she ventured again: "I don't suppose Mrs. Mosby

knew how to reach me?" Miss Susie looked puzzled and she continued in

explanation, "I had a note from Joe Hooper saying you had had a little

spell--I suppose Mrs. Mosby 'phoned him."

Miss Susie gave a little snort. "And what would Loraine Mosby be doing

meddling in my affairs? She hasn't called on me for years. Like as not

it was that fool Lavinia Burrus. You would think she owned and was

running the town. The salvation of Bloomfield weighs mighty heavy on

her shoulders these days--with her '_Dear_ Miss McCallum,' and her

'Poor dear Mrs. Hamilton!' I've a mind to tell her that charity, even

of thought, begins at home--where it's needed."

Mary Louise felt a sudden sort of displeasure. She had adopted the

devious method of getting at the true state of affairs, for that was

the only way any one could get anything out of Miss Susie. And now she

found herself getting interested on her own account. She had once

supposed that it had been through Mrs. Mosby's agency that she had

been apprised. It now appeared that someone else--an outsider and a

parvenu at that--had linked her name with that of Joe Hooper's to send

her word through him. It gave her rank displeasure. To be officially

tagged as "Such and such" by a "one-horse" little town. Yes it was a

"one-horse" little town. Her assurance slipped from her and in

confusion she sought to investigate no further.

"Where's Mattie? You ought to have something about your shoulders."

She rose to her feet and began poking about on the wardrobe shelf.

"Mattie's not here," said Miss Susie.

Mary Louise turned around. "Mattie's not here?--And what's the reason

she's not here?"

Miss Susie's voice was acquiring calm. "She decided that this wasn't

good enough place for her. She couldn't bear to think of all the money

servants were getting down in Louisville--so she left."

Mary Louise came back and stood before her chair. She looked at her

aunt intently. "You mean to say she _left_ you?"

"She did."

It was too much for Mary Louise's comprehension and she contemplated

the fact bleakly. "Why, her people have been here on the place for

four generations!"

Miss Susie's face was grim. "Ten dollars a week was too much for her."

Slowly the conviction was taking root. "And she has really left?"

Miss Susie nodded.

"And taken Omar with her?"

Miss Susie nodded again.

"And Landy?"

There was a moment's silence. Miss Susie, it seemed, would for the

dramatic effect have preferred that the defection had been universal.

"No," she said half regretfully, "Landy's stayed with me."

"And done the cooking, I suppose?"

"He did--after Wednesday."

"And Wednesday? _You_ tried it until then, I suppose?" Mary Louise's

tone was all reproach.

Miss Susie did not deny it.

They sat for a moment in dismal accord. Mary Louise had a sudden

feeling as though the family were breaking up. All during the war the

little corps of servants had remained intact. She had felt that, the

war over, the danger point had been passed. Also the reason for Miss

Susie's little spell was now apparent.

Directly she asked more briskly, "D' you try to get any one

else?--Zibbie Tuttle?"

"Zibbie's gone to town, too."

Another moment's depressed silence.

"And how about Zenie? She used to cook."

Miss Susie sighed. "Zenie's got her head all full of fool notions. She

thinks she has to stay home and look after that worthless Zeke."

"And she won't come? You've tried her?"

Miss Susie shook her head grimly.

Mary Louise suddenly laughed. It was a dry, mirthless sort of laugh.

"Looks like the Negroes are getting all the latest notions of

progress, too. I must have put the idea into their heads."

"All except Zenie," amended Miss Susie. "She's old-fashioned."

"Perhaps I'd better be coming back." She stood by the door, musing.

Miss Susie reached over for her spectacles. There was an almost

imperceptible flash in her eyes. "And be like Zenie?"

The shot missed. Mary Louise was turning over many things in her mind.

Her little plans were being threatened and by circumstances which she

had previously scorned to notice. Irritation and a restless desire to

be up and at her obstacles were prevailing over all other feelings.

For several moments she pondered, gazing through the glass half of the

sitting-room door, and then with a hurried, "I'll be back," she bolted

from the room, out toward the kitchen.

When she returned some fifteen minutes later there was a look of

settled calm on her face, and she busied herself making Miss Susie

comfortable; for she had reached a decision and could think about

other things. And the things that old Landy had told her had sobered

her while they strengthened that decision.

That night she lay on a restless pillow. The sudden change from the

rattle and bang of the city where all the little noises were swallowed

up in a general roar was hard on her ravelled nerves. She missed the

noise. She found herself painfully acute to all the little tickings

and crackings and buzzings that an open country window brings to one's

ears. There was an unpleasant smell of damp matting there in the dark

room. And the wind, as it came soughing down from the hill behind,

caught a loose end of the roof somewhere over her head and made as

though to roll it back. But it never did. Her bed was lumpy. It had

never seemed so before. And there was not enough ventilation in the

room. The two windows, placed side by side in the eaves, allowed no

circulation. People in the country did not know how to live. Now she

would knock that partition away. There was no use having a hall at

the head of the stairs, a hall that led nowhere except into one room.

She would knock that partition away and make a single big room of the

whole attic. And then the window in the hall would serve for

additional light and air for the one room. Or would it be better to

cut another window and run the partition lengthwise, thus making two

rooms of it? That might be better. Two rooms were better than one

great big barn of a room. Later on, perhaps, she would have it done.

She fell asleep over the complexity of the problem.

The next morning she set out with dispatch to carry out her plan. She

went to see Zenie Thompson.

She found that much maligned and misunderstood woman cheerily rocking

her leisure away at the front door of her home. The air was warm and

Zenie had, contrary to the tenets of her race's religion, thrown open

all the front of her house, windows and all. The neck of her waist,

which was a very old white one of Mary Louise's, was likewise frankly

open, and as there was considerable difference in the respective

sizes, Zenie seemed on the point of bursting from its doubtful

whiteness into all her full-blown coffee-coloured creamness. She

hastily pinned up the bosom of it a little as Mary Louise turned in at

her gate.

"How do, Mis' Ma'y Louise," she beamed, rising to her feet and holding

her offspring clutched at a precarious angle to her shoulder. She

stood with one hand resting on the doorpost and in her eyes

expectancy. "Won' you-all come in?"

"Just for a minute," said Mary Louise, refusing the proffered chair

and giving the room a hasty, critical look. Even in that critical look

she could find naught to criticize. The cabin was a small three-room

affair, set back from the street, between two vacant old storehouses.

Zeke had whitewashed it without and calcimined it within, and with the

free air that circulated the place this treatment was enough to make

the front rooms passable. Over the iron mantel hung Zeke's "Knights of

Macabre" sword in its scabbard. Mary Louise looked for the

white-plumed hat but it had evidently been put away. On the left wall,

in a brilliant gilt frame, hung a coloured portrait of Admiral Dewey.

The artist had in some way inspired a look of malign cunning on the

face by shifting the position of the left eye a hair's breadth below

normal, but the mouth and smile were benign. On a table to the right

reposed a glass case with a base of felt and a rounded top--the

mausoleum for an ancient bird creature that looked like a prairie

chicken, very droopy and, in spite of its interment, quite dingy with

dust. It was vaguely familiar to her somehow.

Zenie was watching the inspection with an eager, expectant look. When

Mary Louise had apparently finished and turned to her again, she

smiled.

"You ain' eveh see ouh house befo', is you?"

Mary Louise admitted she never had. And then to disarm any suspicion

that she might have come for social reasons only, she attacked the

matter in hand with characteristic vigour:

"Zeke's not home much, is he?"

"Right smaht he ain', no'm." Zenie's face was all expectant smiles.

Not a shadow seemed to linger near it.

Mary Louise allowed her gaze to travel about the room. In the entire

atmosphere of the place was no besmirching suggestion of toil. She

returned again to Zenie. The latter was like some tropical flower in

full bloom. She began, selecting carefully her ground: "You haven't

any place to put your baby, no one to watch him while you work, have

you?" This was spoken with all the force of conviction.

Zenie's face wreathed itself in another smile. "I ain' do no mo'

wuk--not ontil Zeke he come home."

Mary Louise paused and drew breath. She began again: "If there was

somewhere you could put him, someone who could look out for him, or if

it was so that you could keep an eye on him yourself--why, you could

go to work again, like you used to."

The brightness of Zenie's smile began to fade. "Yas'm. Yas'm, reckon I

could." She turned her attention to the child in her arms and her

voice, as she continued, was liquid soft. "Zeke's doin' so good--I

ain' aim to wuk out no mo'. Jes' keep house heah fo' him."

Then Mary Louise, sensing defeat, struck; struck unerringly for her

objective which she judged to be the vulnerable spot; struck with

characteristic vigour and direct: "I'll give you six dollars a week if

you'll come and do the cooking for Miss Susie, for this summer." She

paused and observed the effect.

Zenie had suddenly acquired all the coy graces of a maid receiving a

long-expected proposal. She cast her eyes discreetly down, toyed at

the rocker edge with her shoe, and smiled.

"You won't have to clean up the house. Landy does that. You won't have

to do a single thing but cook." The speech ended with a rising

inflection. Mary Louise's eloquent picture inspired even herself with

hope.

"Mis' Burrus done offa me seven."

There was a momentary silence, during which time Mary Louise

marshalled her routed forces. Directly she gallantly renewed the

attack: "I'll give you seven then. And you can have all the time off

you want, whenever you get through with the dishes." She had come, in

a way, prepared for shocks, but the whirlwind manner of her

recklessness was leaving her a bit breathless.

Zenie's face at once assumed a look of concern and lifting her head

she pondered far-off possibilities. "Zeke, he home so little," she

began, and her voice had an ineffable sadness, "I likes to be home

when he come."

"But you _can_ be at home when he comes," Mary Louise explained with a

patience which she far from felt. "You can get off directly dishes are

done--seven o'clock every evening, I'm sure."

"I know," responded Zenie, still doubting. "But Zeke, he gone at

night. Mos' eve' night. He home in de day, mos' de day."

It ended by Mary Louise's offering and Zenie's accepting ten dollars a

week, and with a promise of starting in on the following Monday. Mary

Louise descended the cabin steps with the hollow pomp of one who has

bought his victory too dearly. Zenie, from the steps, called cheerily:

"Mis' Ma'y Louise. You bring me some goods fuh a dress? Sometime when

you come up ag'in?"

Mary Louise paused at the gate and speculated on the humble creature

on whom she had wreaked her will. "I guess I might, Zenie. What kind

do you want?"

Zenie beamed. "Oh, mos' any kin'. Whateveh you think is pritty. I pay

you fo' it."

Mary Louise promised and departed. She walked home very thoughtfully.

Ten dollars a week! Ten dollars just to get the cooking done! She had

had her eyes fixed very clearly indeed on the coveted goal to brush

aside such an expensive obstacle.

That afternoon, as she busied herself with little chores about the

house--she was sweeping the side porch at the time--she chanced to

look up and saw Joe Hooper driving by in a low-swung phaeton behind a

sleepy old horse. Beside him sat Mr. Mosby, very prim and very erect,

and Joe's arm lay along the back of the seat behind him. The street

was rather shady and it was quite a distance from where she was to

where he was passing. But somehow it seemed to her that there was a

singularly cheerful, quite happy expression on his face as he lolled

back against the cushion. And he did not look in as he passed.

CHAPTER VII

Two weeks passed. Joe felt himself gradually slipping into an abyss of

resignation. Nearer and nearer came June. Less and less he seemed to

care. He took interest in nothing. He ate and slept and plodded. He

ate and slept and plodded as though all that life consisted of was

eating and sleeping and plodding. Most of us have seen in some quiet

fence corner, just behind the barn, under some old tree with gnarled

trunk and droopy branches, an old gray horse, with eyes closed, muzzle

resting on the top rail, one hind leg slightly bent and propped by the

tip of a cracked and drying hoof. Most of us have seen such a horse,

seemingly on the gradual slip into oblivion, whose very tail-switching

was so rhythmic and regular as to fit in, in absolute harmony, with

the swelling waves of sleep and measured breathing and all that sort

of thing. And that very horse might well be on the brink of a day's

exhausting labour. And furthermore he might well know it. Certainly

his experience might tell him--easily enough. Yet he stands there

switching in a sort of self-imposed numbness. It is probably nature's

way of anaesthetizing him from the pain of unlimited drabness. It is

the only way a sensitive nature can face such a prospect without going

mad. Such was Joe.

He had slumped. He no longer cared. He no longer cared if skies were

blue and if breezes were lazy and outdoors was calling. He no longer

cared when the quitting whistle blew. He no longer cared that June was

only two weeks off. He would not even have cared if June had been the

end of it all. He had settled into his stupor.

And then one morning at about eleven o'clock he was summoned to the

telephone by the switchboard operator. It was a drowsy morning, full

of dronings and rustlings, and he was very heavy lidded as he stepped

into the booth reserved for such calls. He had been expecting a

message from Indianapolis about some shipment that had gone astray and

for which he was putting in a claim. He sank heavily down upon the

hard, polished little stool. The air was stuffy and foul about him.

"This Mr. Hooper?" he heard a voice say.

He said it was.

"Well, this is----" He had not the slightest idea what the name was.

But it made not the slightest difference. It might have been the

president or it might have been the shipping clerk. All that mattered

was that it was a tiresome sack of castings giving him some extra

trouble. And so he stretched a little and yawned a little and replied:

"Yes. All right."

And then the voice went on a little hurriedly--too hurriedly for him

to catch it all. And instead of "sack of castings," the voice kept on

crazily alluding to "your uncle" and "all night"--and phrases that

were jumbled as in a dream. He came to himself suddenly with a start

and then the connection was broken off and there was nothing but a

confused buzzing and rattling. He straightened up on the stool, waited

a minute, and then jiggled the receiver. He felt very queer. He felt

to blame for his stupidness. He felt someway as though he had been

caught up with. And he could not understand.

Directly the exchange called his name and he responded quite sharply

and briskly. Then her "Just a minute," and he was feeling suddenly

taut and tense. And then the voice was switched on again.

Like a dream it came. He could barely make out the syllables. The

voice was broken--seemed very far-away--very weak. It was telling him

that his uncle--his uncle, Mr. Mosby--"Brrr! Brrr!"--and had not been

seen since. There was a moment's pause.

And then--would he come?

Another pause and he had vague notions that that was all. And yet he

had not heard. Yes, he would come.

There was a click and then silence, and there he was, sitting just as

though he had dreamed it all. Then a voice called, "Did you get

them?" And he mechanically put up the receiver without a word.

Something had happened--just what, he could only guess--make out

piecemeal. There was trouble--he could feel that. Uncle Buzz had

somehow stepped beyond the pale. He had heard the words "all night"

and "no trace of him." This was no ordinary trouble. This was not a

matter of trial balance.

He opened the door and stepped out into the office. It was a changed

place. Over there was his long flat-topped desk with the opened ledger

upon it. A sheet of paper had blown to the floor and was sliding over

toward him, its edges curling lazily. These seemed live, vibrant

features. One of the clerks across the way had thought of something

humorous and was leaning forward to tell his vis-a-vis. It had been so

vital that he had laid his pen down to tell it. He was talking with

half-shut lips, with eyes that shifted back and forth alert for a

glance of disfavour. His rusty black derby sat on the back of his

head: his white pique tie had slipped away from a bright brass collar

button....

Through the open door he could see Mr. Boner hunched up over his desk

and as he watched, that gentleman suddenly plunged his head in a

ducking motion toward the cuspidor on the floor and just as quickly

bent down again over the desk. Like fire-flashes of consciousness all

these things were. These were things going on outside of him. There

was a world moving on outside of him, a world that took little count

of the creatures in its path. All this--all this about him--was like a

bit of stale, flat, slightly greenish backwater--the big wheels

churning away just beyond and paying it no attention, letting it grow

staler and staler. Some day there would come a change--as though the

miller had opened up another sluice--and a few vigorous splashings and

all would be changed even here. He viewed it speculatively, as one

outside it all. He suddenly felt that for him it was all over. And he

went into Mr. Boner's office.

Mr. Boner looked up sidewise.

"I've had a 'phone call from home."

Mr. Boner's eyes rolled slightly, showing the whites.

"There's some trouble there. I'll have to go."

A moment's pause. Mr. Boner cleared his throat. "All right," he said.

And then he bent back over his work.

He went and got his hat. With his hand on the swinging door he paused

and looked back. Not a head was raised. In the air there hovered a

droning, a rustling. It was like a vast, drowsy, slothful thing,

ignorant, dull, hateful. He pulled open the door. And then he left it.

Three hours later he was standing in the "Golden Rule" at Bloomfield.

Before him was a glass counter wherein were displayed knives and

cleavers and scissors and other cutlery. Above the counter, peering

at him rather anxiously over steel-rimmed spectacles, were the head

and shoulders of Mr. Burrus. Burrus! It had come to him on the train.

That was the name he had not caught. Burrus! Who else?

"And you say that the last time you saw him was when he got into his

buggy and drove away--last night? What makes you think he's gone

away?"

Mr. Burrus had been thoughtfully eyeing his stock of knives through

the case and as Joe finished he cast a quick, sidewise glance up at

him. Joe caught the flicker of it through the spectacles. "Well," he

began, and hesitated a little, "it's what I woulda done--under the

circumstances." Mr. Burrus' manner, usually so brisk and

business-like, seemed suddenly to have changed. He scratched his head

with a long and bony finger and looked up again at Joe. What he saw

seemed not to reassure him, for Joe had all of a sudden grown beyond

Bloomfield's conception of him. He towered above the cutlery

case--seemed to fill out his clothes. There was a set look about his

mouth and a steadiness about his eyes. Mr. Burrus paused again.

"Circumstances?" said Joe. "Under what circumstances?"

Mr. Burrus gazed off into the clear blue of the sky patch outlined by

his front door. "Well," he began cautiously, "I weren't callatin' to

say anything about this to anybody, but--I had to let Bushrod go."

The little weazened body with its scrawny neck rising out of the

gaping rubber collar, the shiny bald head with its fringe of graying

hair about the edge, the white shirt sleeves with the frayed cuffs and

the skinny brown hands--a most incongruous disguise for Nemesis to

take in passing a pronunciamento.

"Why?" Joe repeated after him softly. "Wasn't he doing his work?"

Another flash-like glance up through the steel-rimmed spectacles. Mr.

Burrus appeared to be weighing his words. "No," he considered, "it

weren't that." He drummed with his fingers on the glass counter. "He

was drunk," he snapped out, and stared sternly off into space. And

then as if he felt it becoming of him, he frowned and his adam's-apple

moved up and down with quick, spasmodic jerks. But he would not look

at Joe.

A moment's silence descended on the shop and the odours of the place,

as though set free by that silence, came drifting to Joe's nostrils as

he stood there waiting--waiting for the story. There was a blending of

the smells of coal oil and fresh cloth on bolts and the indefinable

metallic smell of tinware, and behind it all an overtone of odour, as

it were, of sweet growing things--hay and grain--and the

fields--Someone dropped a pan in the rear of the shop and Mr. Burrus

looked around fiercely. When he again faced Joe, the harassed look was

gone.

Joe had been gradually making up his mind. "You'd seen him drunk

before?--That wasn't the first time?"

Mr. Burrus looked up. "Well!" he began tartly. "So much the worse,

isn't it?"

"No," said Joe, "it's not. If you'd fired him the first time there'd

have been some reason for it. It was because he wasn't the kind of man

you wanted in your office, wasn't it?"

"That was it, exactly," agreed Mr. Burrus.

"It was because he didn't see things as he should, didn't do things as

he should--in a general way--that he wasn't fit for the job, Mr.

Burrus?" Joe went on.

"Exactly."

"And if he had--had been of a piece with yourself--so that you could

have jiggled him around in your fingers like a hunk of putty, it would

have been all right. It was not his drinking--it was his drinking in

spite of your wanting him not to--that got him in bad, wasn't it, Mr.

Burrus?"

Mr. Burrus fidgeted and then turned sharply on Joe. "This ain't no

third degree."

"And you think he's gone away?" Joe continued as though not hearing

him.

"Of course he's gone away. What else was there for him to do?"

There was no obvious alternative.

Joe took his leave and went to see Mrs. Mosby. As he stood waiting in

the cool, high-ceilinged hall, he was struck by the quiet of the

place. It had an air of waiting. What for? There was a high walnut

hat-rack with a mirror and a marble slab with a card tray on it, and

two high-backed chairs, likewise black walnut and elaborately carved

and atrocious, and in the dim recesses of the stair a horsehair sofa,

all just as they had been for years. They were mute but they seemed

expectant. What could they be waiting for? They were on the outside

edge of things--where life was passing. What could be in store for

them? And yet, as he stood in the hall, with the sound of his

breathing so fine, so distinct in his ears, they seemed to be part of

another presence waiting there with him, a mute presence as to sound,

but in some way eloquent voiced, clamorous to be heard.

A faint rustling came to his ears and then steps, and looking up, he

saw his aunt Loraine coming down the stairs. Her bangles and her

trinkets gave out hushed little clickings and he could hear her

breathing as she came across the carpet to meet him.

"Joseph," she said, and he could see beneath her shell that she was

agitated. "Joseph! What do you suppose can have happened?" Her

toilette, like an ancient ritual observed in every sacred detail,

included her manner and deportment. The voice, the inflection, the

bearing--all went with the ruching and the bangles. Joe had once

wondered if she put them all in the same box when she went to bed.

"I don't know, Aunt Lorry, I'm sure." Catching a haggard look about

her eyes he added more gently: "But I wouldn't be too worried. He's

probably gone to Louisville."

She shook her head, and in spite of herself her voice broke a little.

"He's never done that without telling me."

Joe stood for a moment in thought. "There was no business that would

take him anywhere--business about the farm?"

"No," she said. "Won't you come in and sit down in the parlour? I was

so upset----"

He looked at her kindly. It was perhaps the first time in his

experience he had ever done so. Somehow the shell did not seem so to

cover her. She was such a tight little body, a close-bound fagot of

reserves and inhibitions. She had never exuded the slightest humanity.

And now the shell was cracking and little glints were showing through.

"No, Aunt Lorry," he said. "Not now. There's nothing to be gained by

talking--unless you have any ideas as to where--where he might have

gone."

Her eyes looked haggard but they remained stoically dry. She shook her

head.

He turned to go and took a few steps toward the door. And she came and

laid her hand on his arm. It was as light and feathery as a dead leaf,

but he could feel the warmth through his sleeve.

"Don't," she said, "don't let anything get out if--if there's

anything should be kept quiet." She looked him earnestly in the eyes.

"I'll depend on you?"

He promised and ran lightly down the front steps. Behind him the front

door closed, ponderous and grave. And as he passed around the curve of

the driveway to the gate he looked back and the shadows of the old

house were stretching out toward him on the grass.

He had had a sudden idea. There in the front hall it had occurred to

him that there was one person at least who might know something. He

had recalled that last night spent in the upstairs ell bedroom, the

voices, the clatter of a car. Zeke was probably closer to his uncle

Buzz than any other living soul. And just as suddenly he had decided

that it would be time wasted to talk with his aunt Loraine--time that

could be well spent elsewhere. And so his departure had been

precipitate. And now as he hurried along the plank walk, beneath the

arching branches, with the world so fresh and green and hopeful about

him, he felt how incongruous everything was. Over beyond the hedge the

blackbirds were hopping about on the grass looking for worms, giving

occasional satisfied clucks. Across an intersecting road, on up ahead,

an old buggy passed, drawn by a jogging horse with hanging head. Like

the Mosby turnout--very. And that very morning he had been at his

desk, drugged, overwhelmed with the hopelessness of monotony.

He passed on to the other side of town, keeping to the back streets,

for he did not wish to meet any one or talk to any one. It was nearing

six o'clock as he approached the gate of Zeke Thompson's cabin, and

there was that golden glow in the sky which so often follows a spell

of dampness. It had rained the night before--the road looked dark and

cool--and about the western sky the clouds were hovering as if

undecided. But the sunlight streamed bravely through and all was fresh

and clean and cool.

The front door was open and as Joe passed through the gate he saw no

one. Softly he climbed the steps and passed over the threshold. The

room was empty, but an apron thrown carelessly over the back of a

rocking chair gave evidence of its having been vacated not long since.

The door to the next room was standing ajar.

Joe stood and pondered. Just what should he ask Zeke? Should he tell

him what had happened? Zeke might probably have heard, if the news was

about. Standing there, waiting, there came to his ears a peculiar

sound, faint, high-pitched, and monotonous. He listened. Someone was

singing in the next room in a voice not much louder than a whisper.

Curious, he walked softly over to the door and peered through.

There in a tiny rocking chair sat a little figure rocking to and fro.

Its back was half turned toward him, but he could see a kinky head

which was bent over something held in its arms, which it was most

evidently lulling to sleep. The room was darkening, with only a single

patch of orange-coloured sunlight upon the bare floor. Back and forth

went the little body. He could see the bare feet with the stubby toes,

escaping as by miracle the ever-threatening rocker. There was a small

square of blue-calico-covered back, two little pigtails of hair

tightly tied with scraps of baby-blue ribbon, and--the voice. It was

as fine and high as wind blowing across a hair and with a curious,

lifting minor note. He listened.

First there would be a gentle hushing and then the refrain--the melody

was unappreciable and elusive, though constant:--

"Grasshopper set on sweet tater vine,

On sweet tater vine,

On sweet tater vine.

Big turkey gobbler come up behime

And nip him off that sweet tater vine."

With the word "nip" would come a crescendo, swelling to a sharp little

monosyllabic quaver, and then the whole thing would die away most

mournfully.

Twice he heard it sung through to the faint accompaniment of the tiny

screaking rocker. It was a very solemn abjuration against the

promiscuous sitting about of casual creatures. And oddly enough it

seemed to him in a way that something was speaking through that

feeble, quavering voice to him; that this was of the same parcel with

what had happened, was happening. He felt singularly tense--had not

the slightest desire to laugh. And as he watched, the orange patch on

the floor began to fade, until the room was bathed in shadow. And the

song came suddenly to an end and he heard a gentle little "Hush," and

then a sigh, and then silence. Slowly he backed away on tiptoe from

the door.

He had barely gained the security of the front room--somehow he felt

it as security--when he heard the gate screak and, turning suddenly,

saw a man dart like a shadow around the side of the house. For a

moment he stood in indecision; then he walked softly to the open front

door and stood waiting on the threshold. It would be easier to explain

his presence there. The sky had grown darker; curling billows of cloud

rolling in from the south had chased away the orange glow and their

under surface was lit by a pale-green luminance as they came. Shifting

wisps of vapour slid twisting and writhing on up ahead, like outriders

on reconnaissance. It was singularly still.

Joe stood and waited. Directly he heard a sound, and then steps echoed

on the walk around the side of the cabin, and then a man came hurrying

around the corner, took one step up on the cabin stair, and then fell

back with a low cry: "Fo' de Lawd."

It was Zeke. The smoothness of his skin turned an ashen colour and the

whites of his eyes were rolling. He pushed back away from the doorway

and stared at Joe. Gradually the terror began to fade out of his face

and it was superseded by a sickly grin. Joe was watching him closely.

"You plum skeered me to deff," he finally managed to say, his breath

coming fast and thick. "Thought you wuz a ghos'." The grin was very

weak and it quickly subsided.

Zeke was a gaunt "darky" of that peculiar transparent blackness that

looks as though it is put on only one layer deep, and yet is black,

not brown. He was thin and shambling, with high and prominent

cheekbones and eyes that showed a lot of white at all times. Across

one cheek was a long, purplish scar reaching up to the corner of one

eye. It gave him a look of cunning from that quarter. But on the whole

he was an ineffectual, shiftless looking Negro, with hands that were

always dangling and feet that always dragged.

"Ain' seen you fo' a long time, Mist' Joe."

"No. I've been away--down in the city." He paused a moment,

considering the best way to begin. "Where were you and Mr. Bushrod

last night?" he ventured on a bold stroke.

Zeke's eyes opened wide. "Why, we wusn' no place, Mist' Joe, Mist'

Bushrod, he--I was to bring him--he and I wuz to have a little bisnis

ovah to de house, but I couldn' come." His face clouded and took on

an anxious look. "Dey ain' no trubbel, is dey, Mist' Joe?"

Joe made no reply and Zeke watched his thoughtful, serious face with

growing anxiety. Here was one more avenue of possible solution

blocked. Since yesterday afternoon no one had apparently seen

him--Uncle Buzz. It was as though the world had swallowed him up. He

would have to seek elsewhere. He was on the point of dismissing the

matter, of going elsewhere, when a thought suddenly came to him.

"You and he were to have some business last night?" he said, looking

at Zeke intently.

Zeke grinned a sheepish grin. "Yessuh, we wuz--we had a little

bisnis."

"But you didn't meet him? Sure you didn't meet him?"

"Sho I neveh. I ain' able to git de--I was detain'." Zeke had learned

from experience and considerable instinct to hedge his utterances

about with much generality. It was a good principle. It meant less to

retract.

Joe thought another moment. "Take me," he said suddenly, "to the place

where you get the business." There he might find a connecting link in

his chain, he felt growingly certain.

"Oveh to Mist' Bushrod's?" The inflection was perfectly naive.

"No. Of course not--out where you get it. Over to Fillmore or wherever

it is."

"Now, Mist' Joe," very reproachfully and with a quick, nervous

flashing of the eyes.

Joe frowned. "You needn't put on anything with me, Zeke. I'm not going

to give you away. Let's go get your car." He stretched out his arm as

though to sweep Zeke into doing his bidding and started for the door.

"But I ain' eveh had no bisnis to Fillmo'," Zeke began in a last

effort to stem the tide. "They ain' no bisnis theh."

"That's more like it. That may be the truth," said Joe pressing him

on. And Zeke reluctantly passed out and descended the steps.

As Joe turned to close the front door behind him he caught a look back

in the room. Framed in the doorway stood a very small pickaninny,

barely reaching to the knob. She was barefoot, in a blue calico dress,

with her hair done in two kinky braids that stood out in front like

diminutive horns. In her arms she held tightly clutched an old corn

shock wrapped in a red rag. One hand grasped the doorpost. And she was

watching him wide eyed and very gravely.

"That's good advice you gave me," Joe said to her, as he closed the

door.

They made their way around a corner to a ramshackle shed, Joe urging

on the reluctant Zeke by the menace of an encroaching shoulder. Zeke

paused at the entrance. He groped in his pocket and directly pulled

forth a key on a very dirty, greasy string. Fumblingly he inserted it

in the lock. Then he paused again and lifting his eyes, thoughtfully

inspected the sky.

"Look powahful lak rain," he reflected dubiously.

"Get the car out," said the inexorable Joe. "We can put the top up."

Zeke opened the door and went in. For several minutes there was the

metallic slip and catch of the crank and Zeke's laboured breathing.

Then there issued forth a reverberating roar as of a monster released

in travail, and then slowly there emerged, back end first, a perfect

scarecrow of an automobile, mud stained and rust streaked, with an

arrangement on the back like a discarded chicken crate, with fenders

that were battered and twisted as though torn by some elemental

tempest, and with a sagging and flopping top over the front seat that

looked as though at any moment it might collapse from sheer

decrepitude. Slowly the thing backed out of the shed, in a curve to

the road, with much groaning and roaring, and then came to a stop. The

whites of two eyes peered out of the shadow of the enveloping bonnet

as Joe approached.

He took one more look at the sky before he climbed in. The racing

forerunners of storm had in some inexplicable manner vanished and

there remained a lowering canopy of gray and black with here and there

a patch of grayish green. Over in the west was a thin line of greening

yellow, and the shadows were darkening over the back lanes through the

trees.

"Let's go," said Joe, climbing in.

With much panting and sputtering and popping the car started slowly

forward and they were off. Neither spoke. They came to an intersecting

street and Zeke slowed down the car.

"Which way, Mist' Joe?" he asked.

Joe was suddenly irritated. "To Fillmore. You know where I mean.

Wherever you've been going for the stuff."

Zeke made a sudden turn to the left, narrowly escaping the projecting

roots of a tree. Joe clung to the top brace for support. Down a

darkening street they rolled, with the trees arching, sombre overhead,

and on either side, back in the shadows, the darker shapes of houses

with here and there the passing glow of a lighted lamp. Night

descended upon them as they left the town and a few splashes of rain

appeared on the dirty glass of the wind-shield. Joe settled stoically

down to wait. There was so much time to be passed until he could be of

further use and until then there was no need of making any effort. The

thought of the morning came back to him. It did not seem possible that

the same day was passing. Singularly, the idea of Bromley's was the

thing that obsessed him rather than the business in hand. It was as

though he had been released on furlough. "Grind, grind, grind," said

the car. "You will be back at it all to-morrow. This is not real. This

is a dream you're having." He shook himself. He was getting sleepy,

felt utterly fagged.

And then Mary Louise flashed across his mind. "Come on," she seemed to

say. "You're slipping. You're getting behind. They're all getting

ahead of you. You're not keeping up. Let's get in a little

more--little more--little more." He lurched against the top brace,

blinked, and straightened up. Beside him was the shadow bent a little

over the wheel. He could see the outline of the peak of the old golf

cap and the dim tracing of Zeke's face, about it a faint gleam, and

then the flash of an eye. He pondered. Here was Zeke doing his

work--playing his part in the scheme of things. _He_ was not bothered

by any notions of obligation. _He_ was not concerned with working out

his destiny. _He_ played his cards as he got them. "Sometime they roll

seven--and sometime they roll two," he remembered the words of a

philosopher of the rolling rubes a year ago--or was it a lifetime?

Bromley's! The Golden Rule! Mary Louise! All alike. "Shape yourself to

this pattern. Fill this niche. You've got to," said one. "Be like me.

Do as I do. Or get out," said another. "It costs so much to live this

way. And you have to. Or it's not worth living," said the third. How

about his way of looking at it?

He turned suddenly to the inscrutable face beside him.

"You don't let anybody cramp your style, do you, Zeke?" he said.

Zeke started. The sudden voice for a moment terrified him. "Nossuh, I

doesn'," he stammered, anxious to agree.

Joe's voice was kindly encouraging. "Well, don't you let them, ever."

"Nossuh, I won'." And singularly he spoke the truth.

They came to a stretch of sand and the car slowed down appreciably. In

addition there was a grade. And then came a flash of lightning over in

the west, straight ahead of them, and another, fan-shaped, like the

slow opening of a hand. In the momentary glare they saw the outlines

of a hill up before them, with the road clipping it in two. A

telephone pole on the crest stretched out spectral arms and leaned

away. And then darkness again.

Joe decided he had better tell Zeke the object of their mission. It

really didn't matter much, but then he wanted to talk.

"Do you reckon Mr. Bushrod's in Fillmore, Zeke?" he began, trying to

make it as conversational as possible.

"I dunno. Mist' Joe. He might could." This offered no encouragement.

"He's been gone--ever since last night. Reckon he is in Fillmore?" He

caught the gleam of two eyes as Zeke partly turned to look at him.

"I dunno, Mist' Joe. Wheh you reckon he gone?" As yet the import had

failed to reach him.

For a short while they rolled along in silence, silence save for the

rattling labour of the car. The grade was growing steeper. On both

sides of the road the woods were encroaching and the only light was

the feeble one cast by the single uncertain lamp of the car. It barely

seemed to puncture the black.

"Mist' Bushrod ain' been home?" came Zeke's voice. The idea was

beginning to have effect.

"Not since yesterday morning."

For another interval, silence, and then: "Whuh Mist' Bushrod gone?

Reckon he gone to Louisville?" Perhaps the faint stirrings of a cell

of conscience. Who can say?

"Don't know, Zeke. Perhaps."

As though satisfied by this mutual exchange of confidence, Zeke lapsed

again into silence, and for a time nothing was heard save the voice of

the car and occasional sighing bursts of wind high up in the

tree-tops. Then there came a black line of shadow stretching across

their way, on up ahead, and above it a yellowish, greenish streak of

light where the clouds were breaking. Faint wisps of vapour went

curling slowly across the streak and there was a patch of blue, very

deep, and the momentary gleam of a star, and then they plunged into

the shadow.

The air grew cooler, almost cold. The woods had swept down upon the

road and engulfed it. Even the noise of the motor seemed quieter, and

above it could be heard whisperings and occasional crackings.

Something started up from a thicket by the side of the road and they

could hear it scurrying through the underbrush. Zeke moved up the

throttle and they began to move faster. And on either side of them

came down the darkness, sweeping past them, pressing close, and before

them wavered the faltering light, and the cool damp air came fingering

and touched their faces.

Zeke stopped the car. The rushing darkness stopped. The breeze was

still.

"Heah's de place," he said, and his voice was lower; Joe could barely

hear him.

"I thought it was Fillmore. This isn't Fillmore."

"I know," said Zeke. "I doesn' go to Fillmo'. Dis is de place whuh I

gets it. Up de paff a piece."

Joe was on the point of telling him to go on--on to Fillmore, where

proper inquiry might be made, when a sense of curiosity prompted him

to stop. He would see where the illegal traffic was being carried on.

Zeke was trustingly letting him in on his business and he might not

understand. After all, it was getting down in a way to the heart of

the business--in a way getting closer to Uncle Buzz. He had never

bothered much before. He climbed out of the car and Zeke shut off the

motor.

The silence, as he followed Zeke down the narrow path, was oppressive.

There would come a vast sighing like a wave of sound, and a settling,

a few crackings far off, and then silence. The ground was soft with a

matting of fallen leaves, damp and mouldy, and once as Zeke turned his

pocket flashlight from the path there came a gleam of water. Briars

flicked his face and scratched his hands, and once a low-hanging

branch struck him across the eyes and he stumbled from the path and

stepped into slime. He kept close behind his guide, for the darkness

was intense and the path was tortuous. Directly Zeke stopped. The

pocket light made a small circle on the ground.

"Heah 'tis," Zeke whispered, and pointed with the light.

A thicket of blackberry bushes crowded into a corner of an old

snake-rail fence and two old boards were all that was visible in the

narrow compass of the light--that, and a pool of dark water over to

one side. Up above, there was a break in the trees and a suggestion,

beyond, of open fields. He stood for a minute. Nothing else was

visible, nothing from the hand of man, as Zeke moved the light back

and forth in slow-sweeping arcs. It had been a waste of time; there

was nothing to see, nothing but the crude assignation place of a troop

of spectral whiskey jugs, and the seat of a profitable industry. He

turned to go, his mind shifting to other things. He heard Zeke

fumbling in the bushes, saw the light switch into the fence corner,

then across the pool; and then he heard a cry, a low cry of terror,

and caught a glimpse of something white--on the ground, near a big

tree. And then Zeke's voice, "Fo' Gawd!" and the light switched off

and someone came hurrying toward him in the darkness.

"Come on, Mist' Joe. Le's git away fum heah!"

Zeke brushed past him in an agony of haste. He heard his footsteps on

the leaf carpet, saw the crazy flickerings of the light through the

trees, and had a sudden intense desire to follow. But he paused,

curious, mastering his fear. And then the outline of the clearing came

slowly to his eyes, and looking up he saw that the clouds were

breaking and that the tip of the moon was showing through. Slowly the

place was bathed in a silvery flood. Back slipped the shadows. Shapes

that had been pressing, close at hand, receded and took the form of

trees, of bushes, lurking there on the edge of the darkness. He saw

the fence corner. He saw the two boards propped up against it, forming

a cache. He saw the pool, a tiny little woodland pool. And then he

caught again that glimmer of white by the foot of a huge beech tree.

Slowly he made his way toward it with beating heart. Slowly it took

shape, a huddled shadow, right on the edge of the light. He touched it

with his foot, careful lest he step beyond. He stooped. He touched it

with his hand. He turned it over. And the moonlight, slipping through

the trees as though to help him, sent a feeble, flickering shaft

down--upon the upturned face of Uncle Buzz. For a moment it rested

there, as if to reassure him, bringing out in misty detail all that

was necessary. The thing was hideously befouled, besmirched, lying

there in that black swamp water, mute, helpless, utterly broken. But

it was unmistakeable. He stretched out his arms and dragged it from

the water, and the clouds, closing in again, obscured the moon,

leaving all in darkness.

CHAPTER VIII

Two days later they buried Mr. Mosby.

Joe had kept his promise. At least he had kept it as well as it was

possible to keep it. It was decided that Mr. Mosby had met his death

by drowning. That is what "One Half of Rome" believed. The "Other Half

of Rome" perhaps had various ideas. It could not be surmised from the

set conventional expressions on the faces of those gathered together

in the back parlour that hot Saturday afternoon just what the

consensus was. There had been at first a surreptitious buzz of

conversation and then deep silence as the Episcopal priest in his long

white vestments came slowly in. Joe felt peculiarly outside of it all.

He was in a sense neither spectator nor mourner. For Mrs. Mosby

depended on the palsied arm of her brother for support. And then there

were a few old ladies, friends of Mrs. Mosby's, and himself bringing

up the rear--merely appended to the family, the last survivor of the

discredited branch. He was conscious of a heavy scent of flowers

banked about the close, dark room, a scent in which the cloying

sweetness of jasmine prevailed. For a moment there was not a sound,

and then the minister lifted his head and began the burial service.

He, too, was feeling the heavy hand of time, and his voice, so long

charged with the burden of emotion, emotion that had had to be

summoned on short notice, seemed on the point of breaking. He was old

and broken himself, wearied with futility, with his head raised,

half-closed eyes lifted ceiling-ward, his fluttering draperies now

billowy, now closely enwrapping his gaunt frame in the little breeze

that came in from the hall. There was not much of comfort to be

gained, not much of hope. Looking out of the corner of his eyes, Joe

could get a glimpse of a wall of white, blank, expressionless faces

and the silent waving of countless palm-leaf fans. Directly in front

of him was the long, narrow back of Mr. Fawcette, and beside the

latter, Aunt Loraine, sitting very straight and very stiff, her new

black veil opaquely shielding from curious eyes the delicacy of her

grief. The ruching was there, but the bangles had been laid aside. On

went that quavering, faltering voice:

"All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of

men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of

birds."

Of just what kind had been Uncle Buzz, he found himself wondering. A

weaker kind, or at least, a kind ill suited to the world it had been

thrown in.

"Now I say, brethren," the voice went on, "that flesh and blood cannot

inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit

incorruption."

What, thought Joe, were the chances of all those white, fleshy faces

staring there, immovable? The crowd in the back parlour--a single,

silent, pasty-faced, fan-waving convention, over which the fat, pasty

white hand of death was significantly hovering, and about which the

odour of jasmine was pressing. He felt suddenly stifled, suffocated.

He wanted to get up and run away, out of doors, anywhere. The only

thing that seemed to escape the stifling was his Uncle Buzz, lying

there quietly, in acceptance. And then he knew that another link had

been broken, a link that held him to the past. There was a little less

friendliness, a little less cheer, a little less understandableness--he

was conscious of it--a little less need of him.

The service came to an end and a small fraction of the assembly filed

out to the family burying ground on the hill behind the house. Here

came a repetition of what had been enacted in the back parlour, only

there was the distraction of the wind which would be playful and of a

robin, perched on a near-by fence post, who would not be depressed but

sang away its liquid, throaty warble as though the whole ceremony had

been arranged for its own entertainment. It came quickly to an end.

Mr. Mosby was sent on his way with all due convention and dispatch

with a little of sentimentality thrown in for good measure. A few

moments of grace after the last clods of earth were tossed on and

patted down, and then everyone was hurrying away, back to his

respective niche, cloaking haste with a thin layer of dignity. Mr.

Burrus openly ran after a departing "Ford." It was Mr. Martin's, and

the handy reserve carry-all of the "Golden Rule," and Mr. Burrus

preferred a moment's haste to a long, hot walk at greater leisure. Joe

remembered his face, there in the third row at the end, in the back

parlour. Inscrutable it had seemed--a weazened, yellowing blank mask,

slowly souring in the heat. What had he been thinking on? On the waste

of some lost accounts, perhaps--or even on the amount of credit he

might allow the widow. It might be that he contemplated the remote

results of his own handiwork lying there in the black cloth-covered

box. But if this latter, his face showed no sign. And "Neither Half of

Rome," though it point an accusing finger, would pause for a moment as

it passed him by.

Joe did not go back to the house with the rest of the family. Instead,

he struck out across the fields away from them. He climbed the back

boundary fence and was soon walking up to his knees in grass and

weeds. The air was hot and sticky and heavily charged with a

shimmering white water vapour. There were a few sluggish clouds with

sombre centres hanging about the valley to the southwest, and there

was a drone and zip of flying creatures in swarms above the drying

weeds and stubble. Coming to a large oak tree standing solitary in

that wasting field, he threw himself face downward on the ground in

its shadow, careless that the grass was scant, and that his bed was

scratchy. For a moment he lay in utter relaxation, caring for and

observing nothing. And then, the sharp edge of his fatigue being

broken, he slowly turned on his side and leaned his head on his palm,

his elbow resting on the ground. It was a barren prospect that

stretched out before him: lazy, shiftless land clear over the brow of

the hill that sloped away to the house. The Fawcette place had not

been worked to capacity for years, and there it lay, the waste of Mr.

Mosby's opportunity. Tiny creatures swarmed in the grass. Joe could

see them scurrying up and down the withered and drying stalks. A

little crowd of gnats was hovering about his head and occasionally one

would light upon his face and stick there dejectedly. Above the grass,

against the blue of the sky beyond, he could see the shimmering waves

hang tremulous like the air above a hot wood-stove in winter, and

there came to his ears the sudden whirring zip of a grasshopper in

mid-flight. Directly there came another, and another, till the air

seemed full of them. Summer had come. And about him lay the field in

listless idleness.

It was common talk that it should be worked, that it was a shame not

to work it. But there had not been money enough. Money was needed for

everything, everything that man wanted to do, money and something

else. About him buzzed the gnats; all around him poured the sunshine;

and in his ears was the drone of countless insects. This was Saturday.

Another full day and would come Monday. Monday! He had not thought of

it until now. He suddenly felt the uselessness of his bonds. And yet

he could feel the stretching of his tether. Was everybody fastened to

a tether? Was there no such thing as freedom? Singularly enough, this

field in all its idleness, with all its heat, with its droning and

buzzing, suggested freedom. In fact, the feel of the entire country,

this country that he had known, about which his memories clustered

thick, suggested freedom. And yet it was not above reproach. People

spoke of it condescendingly. "Poor land--unproducing--a century behind

the times." What was it? The land? The people? The times? There was

Uncle Buzz, with his foothold on two hundred acres, and they had

buried him in his one good suit. Buried beneath the force of

circumstances, he had never once lifted his head--had died with it in

a shallow pool of water. And _he_ was no better. He could feel the

shackles close about him, binding him hand and foot. What was one to

do? His head dropped down upon the crook of his arm and he fell

asleep.

An hour later he awoke. He felt hot and uncomfortable. He stretched

himself and rolled over on his back. He gazed upward through the

tangle of branches and tried to relax again. But the heat had become

unbearable. He struggled to his feet and brushed the litter from his

clothes. Away in each direction stretched the field. It was dry and

dusty and covered with a short, cutting stubble beneath the upper

surface of waving grass and weeds. It no longer held any allurement

for him and yet he did not want to go back to the house. He looked at

his watch. It was five o'clock. Some of the old ladies would still be

there. They would be sitting about on the horsehair chairs making

lugubrious conversation. Back toward the left stretched the pike,

white and dusty enough. But there were trees along the edge of it, and

he remembered the grass in the fence corners to be long and fresh and

succulent as a rule, even in midsummer. Slowly he started in that

direction. When he reached the boundary fence he was dripping with

perspiration and his shoes and trouser hems were covered with the

yellow dust. He climbed the fence, and as he stepped out into the road

he saw an automobile approaching in the distance, dipping down a hill

to the creek that broke the stretch toward Guests. It was not often

that motors of any distinction saw fit to travel into Bloomfield; the

pike was not good enough. But this approaching car seemed to be one of

some distinction--was long and rather rakish, had a deep sound to the

exhaust as it started up the hill toward him. Idly he watched it.

There were two passengers, a man and a woman, slouched well down in

the seats. What could they be doing in the heat of the afternoon with

the top down and in all that blazing sunlight? He stepped over to the

side of the road and dragged his feet, first one and then the other,

in the grass to wipe off some of the dust. He knew that he was hot and

dirty and dishevelled, but he did not care much. On came the car. As

it came nearer it lost its interest to him and he sat down in the

grass and plucked a blade to chew, paying it no further attention.

Suddenly, to his surprise, he realized it was stopping and then the

woman called to him.

At first he did not recognize her. Her face was quite red from the sun

and she had on a fetching little close-fitting motor-bonnet with

fluttering lavender strings. A long lemon-coloured duster enveloped

the rest of her. She was quite pretty, with the contrast of colour,

with her hair all snugly tucked away. It did not look like Mary

Louise, but it was. He felt very conscious of his dusty old suit and

his wilting collar and his flushed and perspiring face, as he came and

stood by the car.

"This is Mr. Claybrook, Joe," she said, looking at him gravely.

He remembered then the big, confident man that had joined them that

unhappy night.

"I just heard, Joe. It was terrible. I was awfully distressed."

He looked into her eyes--she spoke so earnestly--and wondered if she

were feeling all she might feel. Uncle Buzz had not received very

charitable treatment at her hands. The picture of it all came before

his mind and he said nothing.

"When is--when is the funeral?"

"It's all over," he replied shortly. "This afternoon."

"Oh."

She turned and had a word with her companion. And then he leaned over,

partly across her, smiling quietly.

"We're going right back in an hour or so. Be glad to have you go with

us. There's plenty of room." His voice was big and rather pleasant and

he had an air of careless assumption that everything would be all

right.

"Yes, do, Joe," Mary Louise put in. "I had John drive me up this

afternoon. I wanted to get here in time for----Aunt Susie wanted some

things."

It was quite natural the way she said, "I had John----"

"It will be better than going back on that morning train--to-morrow?

And I suppose you'll have to be back at the office Monday?" He had

never known her voice to be so solicitously sweet.

"No," he said, and he surprised himself, "I'm not going back." He had

come to no such decision. But the idea was suddenly so utterly

distasteful that it seemed impossible. And _she_ having _him_,

Claybrook, take him, Joe, back to work. The smart of it was

intolerable. "No," he repeated firmly, "I'm not going back." And then

he gazed off across the hood of the motor into the vacant field

beyond.

"I see," she replied, rather softly, and he could feel that she was

watching him and that Claybrook was, in a way, standing by in a

condescending attitude, ready to do her bidding.

He was anxious to be off, anxious to be alone. "Thank you very much,

however," he said, and bowed to Claybrook. He avoided Mary Louise's

eyes. He backed away from the car and lifted his hat. "Good-bye."

Turning away, he set off down the road, away from Bloomfield, and

shortly he heard the motor start and the grind of wheels. He looked

back. He saw her lean over as though to speak to Claybrook. And then

he saw Claybrook turn his face toward hers. They were probably talking

about him.

He trudged on down the road, although he had no idea of where he was

going. There was a soreness deep down in his heart and it hurt all the

more because he realized that he had been unreasonable. And he had

said he was not going back. He caught his breath slightly at the

thought. Well, he wouldn't go back. There was no reason why he

should--absolutely no reason. With that he turned about and walked

briskly back up the hill toward home.

As he entered the front hall he could hear a low hum of conversation

on the other side of the parlour doors. They were partly open, and he

hurried past lest someone call for him to come in. He went upstairs,

into the ell bedroom, and took off his coat. He looked at himself in

the glass of the bureau. His face was red and streaked with

perspiration and dust. And _they_ had looked quite fresh--"smart" was

the word. He proceeded to clean himself up and he spent quite a long

time in the process.

When he came downstairs again it was growing dark. He no longer heard

the voices in the parlour. When he reached the foot, he paused for a

moment in uncertainty. The walnut chairs were there, quite placid and

content with themselves, and the hat-rack, and the old horsehair sofa.

His aunt Loraine came out of another door, back in the passage. She

had, of course, laid aside her veil and her face had been freshly

powdered; she looked quite the same. There was a certain prim set to

her mouth, and her eyes, as she looked at him, were calculatingly

cool. She did not touch him but stood with her arms hanging rather

stiffly by her sides.

"Joseph," she said, "we want you to stay, if you will--as long as you

feel you can."

The tiny spark that he had felt died away. "We," she had said. He

wondered who the "we" might be. Mr. Fawcette, perhaps; perhaps one of

the old ladies. Aunt Lorry had evidently been looking ahead. There was

no need for him here.

"No," he said rather quietly. "Thank you very much, Aunt Lorry. I

must be getting back--first train to-morrow, I expect."

She lifted her eyebrows ever so slightly. "Very well. Make yourself at

home while you stay." And she glided off with her queer, noiseless

step, back into the shadow of the hall.

He walked to the front door and out on to the wide verandah. He looked

down the winding driveway to the gate, all mellowing in the dying

sunlight. There was not a breath of air, not a sound. The gate was

standing partly open; the last departing guest had neglected to shut

it. On the driveway lay something white, somebody's handkerchief. It

lay without moving, inert. There was nothing to pick it up, not even

the slightest breeze. He gazed across the open country that dipped

away to the west to the ridge of hills that was crowned with orange

and purple mists, with the white road climbing to its crest. And as he

watched, he could see a small blob of white dust moving, leaving a

feathery tail behind it. And he turned quickly and went into the

house.

PART II

MYRTLE