MRS. POTIPHAR.
It must have been some person aged, say, twenty, who expressed to Noah
the opinion that there wasn't going to be much of a shower. At twenty
tomorrow is ever a clear day, and notes are easy things to meet, and
friends and women are faithful, and Welsh rarebit is digestible, and
sleep is rest, and air is ever good to breathe. Grant Harlson was not
particularly troubled by the condition of his finances. That the money
available had lasted till his schooling ended, was, at least, a good
thing, and, as for the future, was it not his business to attend to
that presently? Meanwhile he would dawdle for a week or two.
So the young man stretched his big limbs and lounged in hammocks and
advised or domineered over his sisters, as the case might be, and read
in a desultory way, and fished and shot, and ate with an appetite which
threatened to bring famine to the family. Your lakeside small town is
a fair place in July. He would loaf, he said, for a week or two. The
loafing was destined to have character, perhaps to change a character.
There had come to Harlson in college, as to most young men, occasional
packages from home, and in one of these he had found a pretty thing, a
man's silk tie, worked wonderfully in green and gold, and evidently the
product of great needlecraft. It was to his fancy, and he had thought
to thank whichever of his sisters had wasted such time upon him, but
had forgotten it when next he wrote, and so the incident had passed.
One day, wearing this same tie, he bethought him of his negligence
lying supine on the grass, while his sister Bess was meanwhile reading
in the immediate vicinity. He would be grateful, as a brother should.
"I say, Bess," he called, "I forgot to write about this tie and thank
you. Which of you did it?"
Bess looked up, interested.
"I thought I wrote you when I sent the other things. None of us did
it. It was Mrs. Rolfston."
"Mrs. Rolfston?"
"Certainly. She was here one day, when we were making up a lot of
things for you, and said that she'd make something herself to go with
the next lot. A week or two later she brought me that tie, and I
inclosed it. Pretty, isn't it?"
"Very pretty."
The young man on the grass was thinking.
He knew Mrs. Rolfston slightly; knew her as the wife of a well-to-do
man who saw but little of her husband.
Daughter of a poor man of none too good character in the little town,
she had grown up shrewd, self-possessed, and with much animal beauty.
At twenty she had married a man of fifty, a builder of steamboats, a
red-faced, riotous brute, who had bought her as he would buy a horse,
and to whom she went easily because she wanted the position money
gives. Within a week he had disgusted her to such an extent that she
almost repented of the bargain. Within a year, he had tired of her and
was openly unfaithful in every port upon the lakes, a vigorous, lawless
debauchee. His ship-building was done in a distant port, and he rarely
visited his wife. He rather feared her, mastiff as he was, for here
was the keener intelligence, and her moods, at times, were desperate as
his. So he furnished her abundant income and was content to let it go
at that. It pleased her, also, to have it that way.
Harlson thought of the woman, and wondered somewhat. Black-haired,
black-eyed, white-skinned, deep of bust and with a graceful and
powerful swing of movement, she was a woman, physically considered, not
of the common herd. She was a lioness, yet not quite the grand lioness
of the desert. She lacked somewhat of dignity and grandeur of
countenance, and had more of alertness and of craft. She was, though
dark, more like the tawny beast of the Rocky Mountains, the California
lion, as that great cougar is called, supple, full of moods and
passion, and largely cat-like. She had filled his eye casually. Why
had she sent him the tie, the silken thing in green and gold?
He thought and pulled his long limbs together and rose till he was
sitting, and decided that it was but courteous, but his duty as a
gentleman, to wander over to her house and thank her for her
remembrance of him. It was but an expression of good will toward the
family generally, this little act of hers; he knew that, but it was a
personal matter, after all, and he should thank her. It was well to be
thoughtful, to attend to the small amenities, and it took him more than
the usual time to dress. His apparently careless summer garb required
the adjustment of an expert here and there. He was an hour in the
doing of it. When he emerged he was not, taken in a comprehensive way,
bad-looking. He was clear-faced, strong-featured and of stalwart build.
The ordinary man he would not have feared in any meeting; of the woman
he was about to meet he had some apprehension. He knew her quality,
but--she had worked for him a tie! He went up the broad path to the
doorway, between flowers and trees and shrubbery. It was three o'clock
in the afternoon, and he would find her alone, he thought, for chances
of calls are not so great in the smaller towns as in the cities; there
is an average to be maintained, and Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith does not
receive on days particularized. He was compelled to wait in the parlor
but a moment. She came in, and he saw her for the first time in two
years.
What a gift women have in producing physical effects upon the creature
male, no matter what the woman's status. Mrs. Rolfston came in with a
look of half inquiry on her face and with a presentation of herself
which was perfect in its way. She wore some soft and fluffy dress--a
man cannot describe a garb in detail--with that lace-surrounded
triangular bareness upon the bosom just below the chin which is as
irreproachable as it is telling. There was a relation between the
swing of her drapery and, the movements of her body. She was rich of
figure, and flexile. And she was glad to see Mr. Harlson, and said so.
He was not really embarrassed. The time had passed when that could be
his way. But he was puzzled as to what to say. Some comment he made
upon the quality of the season and upon Mrs. Rolfston's appearance of
good health. Then he entered upon his subject with no link of
connection with preceding sentences. "I but learned to-day," he said,
"that the tie I wear was made by you. All fellows have little fancies,
I suppose. I have, anyhow. I liked this, though I did not know who
made it. My sister told me, and I have come to thank you. Why did you
do it for me?"
That was putting the case plainly enough, certainly, and promptly
enough, but it was not of a nature to trouble Mrs. Rolfston. This was
a clever woman, married ten years, and of experiences which varied.
She even glanced over the visitor from head to heel before she
answered, and her color deepened and her eyes brightened, though he did
not note it.
"You have changed," she commented. "I should hardly have known you but
for your lips and eyes. You are broader and taller, and a big man, are
you not? How long do you stay in town? Will you spend the summer
here?"
"I wish I could," he answered. "It is pleasant here, but I must work,
you know. I may idle for a little time. You haven't said anything
about the tie."
"Oh, the tie? Don't speak of that. I had the whim to make something
for somebody--I have an embroidering mania on me sometimes--and there
was a chance to dispose of it, you see."
The young man's face fell a little as he looked upon the great,
handsome woman and heard her seemingly careless words. He did not want
to go away, yet what excuse was there for staying? He rose, hat in
hand.
Here, now, was the woman in a quandary. She had not anticipated such
abruptness.
"Don't go yet," she said, impetuously. "I want to talk with you. Tell
me all about the college, and yourself, and your plans. And---about
the tie--I wouldn't have made one for any one else. I remembered your
face. You know I was go often at your home, and I wondered how it
would suit you. You should take that interest as a compliment. And I
am lonesome here, and you are idling, you say, and why should we not be
good friends for the summer? The men in town annoy me, and the girls
here are not bright enough for you. Let us be cronies, will you not?
Take me fishing to-morrow. I want you to teach me how to catch bass in
the river. I heard some one say once you knew better than any one else
how that is done. Is not this a good idea of mine? It will help both
of us kill time."
She sat there on the sofa, half stretched out, yet not carelessly nor
ungracefully, but in an assumed laziness of real felinishness, a woman
just ten years older than the man she was addressing, yet in all the
lushness of magnificent womanhood, and emanating all magnetism.
Harlson said he would call for her and that they would go fishing. And
they went.
The light is tawny upon the lily-pods in shady places on the river.
And rods, such as are used for bass, are light upon the wrist, and, in
the lazy hours of mid-afternoon, when bass bite rarely, demand but
slight attention. And two people idling in a boat get very close in
thought together and come soon to know each other well. And a ruthless
young man of twenty and a tempestuous woman of thirty are as the
conventional tow and tinder.
And there were books she had never read in Mrs. Rolfston's library--for
she was not a woman of books--which interested Harlson, and it was
easier to read them there than take them home. And Mrs. Rolfston
waited upon him--how gifted is a woman of thirty--and he felt bands
upon him, and liked it, and would not reason to himself concerning it.
And one night, late, came a panting servant--Mrs. Rolfston had no men,
only two women domestics, with her in her home--to say that her
mistress had heard some one evidently attempting to open a window on
the piazza, and that they were all in fear of their lives, and that she
had fled out of the back way to ask Mr. Harlson the elder, or his son,
to come over at once and look around.
The father laughed, and said that, had there been a burglar, he must
have fled already, and the young man, laughing too, said that some one
must go anyhow, in all courtesy to defenseless women, and that if Mrs.
Rolfston feared for her front porch, he would lie upon a blanket in the
lawn beside it to set her mind at rest. He had not slept beneath the
stars alone, he said, since the family had left the farm. And there
was much laughing, and Harlson took home the servant girl, and she,
growing bold as they approached the house, ran up the path ahead of
him. The lawn between the better house and street in the lake country
town is often a little forest, so dense the trees and their foliage.
And added to the fragrance of the leaves in later midsummer are the
mingled odors of petunias and pinks and rosemary and bergamot and musk,
for all these flourish late. And the moon comes through the tree-tops
in splashes, and there is a softness and a shade, and it is all like a
scented garden in some old Arabian story, and the senses are affected
and, maybe, the reason. Harlson went up the path, half dreaming, yet
alive in every vein. There was no burglar visible, but a wonderful
woman, in fleecy dishabille, was sure she had heard a sound most
sinister, and endangered women must be guarded of the strong.
And Grant Harlson returned not home that night; yet the moon, shining
through the trees, revealed no form upon a blanket in the garden.
And the summer days drifted by; and the young man fresh from college,
full of ambitions and dreams, found himself a creature he had never
known, a something conscience-stricken, yet half-abandoned, and with a
leaden weight upon his feet to keep them from carrying him away from
the temptation.
He would force himself to a solitary day at times, and go out into the
country with dog and gun, and tramp for miles, and wonder at himself.
He had all sorts of fancies. He thought of his wickedness and his
wasted time, and compared himself with the great men in the books who
had been in similar evil straits,--with Marc Antony, with King Arthur
in Gwendolen's enchanted castle, and with Geraint the strong but
slothful,--rather far-fetched this last comparison,--and of all the
rest. It was a grotesque variety, but amid it all he really suffered.
And he would make good resolves and, for the moment, firm ones, and
return to town when the dew was falling and the moonlight coming, and
the tale was but retold. And the woman was wise, as women are, and
conscienceless, yet suffering a little, too.
She had found more than a summer's toy, and she had grown to fear the
great boy in his moods, and to want to keep him, and to doubt the
measure of her art. This must be a hard thing, too, for such splendid
pirates to bear. They may not even scuttle all the craft they capture.
And the root of all evil is sometimes the root of all good. The dollar
pulls all ways. Harlson must earn his way. One day his father dropped
a chance word regarding some one, miles in the country, who wanted a
fence built inclosing a tract out of the wood. It was isolated work, a
task of a month or two for a strong man, a mere laborer. Young Harlson
became interested.
"Why shouldn't I try it?" he asked.
His father laughed.
"It's work for a toughened man, my boy. You have softened with six
years of only study."
The boy laughed as well.
"You needn't fear," he said. "All strength is not attained upon a
farm, and I want to swing an ax and maul again."
And that day he set out afoot for the home of the man who needed a
fence. He told Mrs. Rolfston briefly. She paled a trifle, but made no
objection. He said he would make visits to the town.