Westerfelt accepted the urgent invitation of the Bradleys to live in
their house awhile. For the first week his wound gave him pain and his
appetite failed him, which was due as much, perhaps, to mental as
bodily trouble, for Harriet Floyd was on his mind constantly.
Thoroughly disgusted with himself for having in the past treated the
hearts of women lightly, he now drew the rein of honor tightly when he
thought of his position and hers. He told himself he would never go to
see her again till he had made up his mind to forget her love for
Wambush and every rasping fact pertaining to it, and honorably ask her
to be his wife. There were moments in which he wondered if she were
not, on her part, trying to forget him, and occasionally, when his
spirits sank lowest, he actually harbored the fear that her affection
might already have returned to Wambush. He recalled something he had
once heard that a woman would love a man who was unfortunate more
surely than one who was not, and this thought almost drove him mad with
jealousy, for was she not likely, through pity, to send her heart after
the exile? Now and then, in passing the hotel, he caught a glimpse of
Harriet on the veranda or at the window, but she always turned away, as
if she wished to avoid meeting him, and this pained him, too, for she
had become his very life, and such cold encounters were like permanent
steps towards losing her forever, which, somehow, had never quite
shaped itself into a possibility in his mind.
It was a warm day in the middle of November, Westerfelt and Washburn
stood at the stable waiting for the hack, which, once a day, brought
the mail and passengers from Darley. It had come down the winding red
clay road and stopped at the hotel before going on to the stable.
"I see a woman on the back seat," remarked Washburn. "Wonder why she
didn't git out at the hotel."
In a moment the hack was in front of the stable, and Budd Ridly, the
driver, had sprung down and was helping a woman out on the opposite
side. When she had secured her shawl and little carpet-bag, she walked
round the hack and came towards Westerfelt.
It was Sue Dawson. She wore the same black cotton bonnet and gown, now
faded and soiled, that she had worn at her daughter's funeral.
"Howdy' do?" she said, giving him the ends of her fingers, and resting
her carpet-bag on her hip. "I _'lowed_ you'd be glad to see me."
There was a malicious gleam in her little blue eyes, and her withered
face was hard and pale and full of desperate purpose.
"How do you do?" he replied.
She smiled as she slowly scrutinized him.
"Well, you _don't_ look as if you wus livin' on a bed of ease exactly,"
she said, in a tone of satisfaction; "you've been handled purty rough,
I reckon, fer a dandified feller like you, but--" She stopped suddenly
and glanced at Washburn, who was staring at her in surprise, then went
on: "Budd Ridly couldn't change a five-dollar bill, an' he 'lowed I
might settle my fare with the proprietor uv the shebang. Don't blame
Budd; I tol' 'im I wus well acquainted with the new stableman; an' I
am, I reckon, ef _any_body is. I had business over heer," she went on,
as she got out her old-fashioned pocket-book and fumbled it with
trembling fingers. "I couldn't attend to it by writin'; some'n's gone
wrong with the mails; it looks like I cayn't git no answers to the
letters I write."
Washburn took the money and went into the office for the change.
"I didn't see what good it would do to write, Mrs. Dawson," said
Westerfelt; "maybe it was wrong for me not to, but I've had a lot to
bear; and you--"
"_That_ you have," she interrupted, her face hardening, as she looked
across the ploughed fields, bordered by strips of yellow broom-sedge,
towards the pine forests in the west. "You wus cut bad, I heer, an'
laid up fer a week ur so, an' then the skeer them Whitecaps give you on
top of it must a' been awful to a proud sperit like yore'n; but even
sech as that will wear off _in time_. But nothin' _human_, John
Westerfelt--nothin' _human_ kin fetch back the dead. Sally's place is
unoccupied. I'm doin' her work every day, an' her dressin' an' pore
little Sunday fixin's is all still a-hangin' on the wall. She wus the
only gal--"
Washburn came back with the change. The old woman's thin hands
quivered as she took the coin and slowly counted the pieces into her
pocket-book, Washburn suspected from the expression of Westerfelt's
face that the conversation was of a private nature, so he went out to
the hack to help Budd unharness the horses.
"No," went on the old woman, sternly, "you've brought about a pile o'
misery in yore life, John Westerfelt, an' you hain't a-gwine to throw
it off like a ol' coat, an' dance an' make merry. You may try that
game; but yore day is over; you already bear the mark of it in yore
face an' sunk cheeks. You've got another gal on yore string by this
time, too."
"You are mistaken, Mrs. Dawson."
"How about the one at the hotel that nussed you through yore sick
spell?"
"There is nothing between us." He hesitated, then added: "Nothing at
all, nor there never will be."
"_You_ say thar hain't, but that don't prove it. I want to lay eyes on
_her_; I can tell ef you have been up to yore old tricks when I see
'er. Ef she's got a purty face you have."
He made no reply.
She hitched her burden up on her left hip and curved her body to the
right. "I'm a-gwine to put up thar, an' I'll see. The Bradleys 'll
think quar ef I don't put up with them, I reckon; but I'm gwine to try
hotellin' fer once. Right now it's in my line uv business.
Good-mornin'; I don't owe you anything--nothin' in the money way, I
mean. Ah! you think I'm a devil, I reckon; well, you made me what I
am. I'm yore work, John Westerfelt!"
He stood in the stable door and watched the little bent figure walk
away. He saw her pass the cottages, the store, the bar, and enter the
hotel; then he went through the stable into the back yard and stood
against the wall in the warm sunlight. He didn't want Washburn to come
to him just then with any questions about business. A sudden,
startling fear had come to him. He was going to lose Harriet now, and
through Mrs. Dawson, and it would be the just consequences of his early
indiscretion.