THE RESURRECTION PLANT
In her own room, the door slammed and locked, Hilda faced the
situation. She fairly glowed and palpitated with the rage that ran
like fire in her veins and seemed to burn out timidity and
indecision. She’d done it now. Pearse had asked her to stay—and
she’d told those people downstairs that she was going to leave. She
would leave, too. If Pearse knew, he’d want her to leave. He’d want
her to walk right out of the house.
Without stopping to change from her riding dress she hurried from
closet to bureau drawers, pulling out things, throwing them on the
bed, folding them, dragging out her trunk, her valises, and
beginning to pack.
Movement in Maybelle’s room; but the door between wasn’t even
touched. Well, she didn’t want to talk to Maybelle. She had nothing
to say to any of them. She was going home.
She worked more systematically now. The supper bell rang. Maybelle
left her room and went down, humming, clattering on the stair. Then
Mrs. Marchbanks herself came to call Hilda. Without opening her door
Hilda repeated that she didn’t want any supper.
“Not pouting, are you?”
“No, I’m not pouting.”
“Of course you aren’t. Well, come down when you get hungry, then,”
Mrs. Marchbanks said finally. “I’ll leave something on the table for
you.” And she went away.
Sounds of the household at supper down there; then people moving
about, talking. After a while, they began to come upstairs, the
children first, Mrs. Marchbanks with them, stopping to tap at the
door and ask if Hilda was all right.
“Yes. All right, thank you, Mrs. Marchbanks.”
The crispness of her tone seemed to send Mrs. Marchbanks away pretty
promptly. Later Miss Ferguson’s slow, precise tread, its hesitation
at her door, then the going on. Hilda was glad of that. Miss
Ferguson was a good sort, she meant well; but Hilda didn’t want to
see her now. Maybelle in her room again, moving about softly; the
colonel’s heavy step; sounds of him locking up; he and Fayte on the
stair, quarreling as usual, but in low tones.
And then the house grew still, except for those light, almost
stealthy movements in the next room. Finally they, too, ceased. It
was after ten o’clock, and Hilda’s work was done, when she suddenly
realized that she should have taken off her riding clothes and
packed them in the trunk. Well, it was locked, and strapped; they’d
have to go in the bag now. She gave one last look around, to be sure
she had forgotten nothing, then went to the window. That
resurrection plant Maybelle had said she’d give her when she went
home; she wanted it; the queer things didn’t grow over on the plains
of Lame Jones County. Yet—she didn’t like to open the door and ask.
Probably Maybelle was already asleep. She leaned out and looked;
that other window beside hers was dark, and there sat the little
plant in its bowl. Hilda made a long arm, reached around and
transferred it to her own sill. She emptied the water in which it
had grown green, and left it to dry out so that it would be ready to
carry away in the morning.
Through all the flame and rush of her, the thought of Pearse had
never been absent from her a moment. At first there was a desperate,
irrational idea that she would see him before she left. Then, as the
mere physical work began to clear her mind, she knew that she
couldn’t do this. She’d have to write. After that, as she moved
quietly, swiftly to and fro, her eyes went continually to the little
table where pens and paper lay, her letter to Pearse forming itself
in her mind. She wanted him to know that, if it had seemed possible,
she would have stayed here as he asked her to. She must beg him to
come over to the Sorrows. No—she shook her head above the dress she
was folding—hadn’t been able to do a thing with him any of the times
when he was right there. It—crowding paper into slipper toes—it was
different now. She’d say—she’d say—
Everything done, she went over and sat down. The sheet before her,
the pencil in her hand, she sat a long time staring, not seeing it.
The furious activity of her moments of packing and getting ready,
the hot anger that had sustained them, were gone. Cold doubts
huddled around the edge of her mind; they clamored for attention.
Suppose Pearse wouldn’t come over to the Sorrows? Suppose he changed
back into that old Pearse she had known, who could be hard and
indifferent? If she was here— When she could see him— But she was
risking all in going away and trusting to a letter—
She finally began, wrote rapidly for a while, stopped, frowned at
what she had written, tore it up, and sat thinking. This whole round
of action she repeated several times. Then in desperation she dashed
down a few lines, signed, folded them, got them into an envelope—put
her head down on the table and began to cry.
It wasn’t noisy grief, just the slow tears of exhaustion. She must
have cried herself to sleep.
What was it waked her? She sat up suddenly in the dark. Her lamp was
out. Dim moonlight made a gray square of her window, and as she
stared at it, there came once more the rattle of gravel against the
glass—then a low, guarded whistle.
The house was still. It must be some time in the small hours. She
didn’t dare strike a match to look at her watch. She stole across
and peered out between the curtains. Over there by the cottonwoods
that gave the place its name—wasn’t that a mounted man in their
shadow? Pearse! It must be. It couldn’t be any one else! She waved a
hasty signal, then slipped over, got her own door open as silently
as she could, and hurried down stairs.
As she struggled with the fastening of the front door, she was
desperately afraid he might have been there longer than she knew—be
discouraged—leave without seeing her. But she’d waved to him from
the window. She thought he answered. Oh—the door gave at last, but
noisily.
She crossed the court on winged feet; some one caught her in a rough
embrace. A face was pushed down against hers. Some one whispered,
“You made a lot of noise getting out, girlie. Where’s your bag?”
She drew back, bewildered, scared, answering mechanically: “It’s
upstairs.”
“Well—for the Lord’s sake!”
That wasn’t Pearse’s voice—even in a whisper Hilda knew it wasn’t.
She’d known this wasn’t Pearse as soon as he touched her. Who was
it? Who did he think she was? She tried to pull free. As her head
went back, her eye caught the row of upper windows. The resurrection
plant changed from Maybelle’s sill to her own—the gravel on the
pane—she’d blundered into some arrangement of Maybelle’s!
“I’m not—” she began; but the man’s fierce whisper interrupted,
“Shut up—whoever you are! Do you want to give the whole thing away?”
His grip on her arm dragged her back into the shadow. She saw a
light flash up and go out in Maybelle’s room, the movement of a
window-curtain there. The man beside her saw it, too. But now there
was noise in the house. He loosed his hold on her arm and backed
away toward his pony. Hilda stood where she was and looked while the
house over there became all lit up. What should she do? Slowly she
went toward the side door, and, as she stood hesitating there, some
one tore it open and stood in it—Colonel Lee Marchbanks, a bathrobe
pulled on over his night-clothes.
“What the devil’s this?”
“Oh, Hilda!” That was Mrs. Marchbanks, following him, getting ahead
of him and taking hold of her. Fayte came from somewhere. Miss
Ferguson was on the porch. The lights from the windows flickered
over their faces. The sound of galloping hoofs came from the
trail—two ponies, plainly.
“Who were those people?” the colonel demanded.
“Only one people, I guess,” Fayte explained jeeringly, when she
didn’t answer. “Masters brought a led pony for her.”
“Masters? Was that Pearse Masters?”
“Let me pass, Colonel Marchbanks.” Hilda pushed by, the rest of them
trailing after her.
In the hall they all came together, and the colonel, who had tripped
on one of his flapping slippers and come up angrier than ever,
exploded,
“You ought to be ashamed, Hilda! That young hound—here on my
place—after he’d been as good as ordered off of it—you dressed and
ready to run away with him! Oh, you can’t lie out of it, young lady;
any fool could see what was up. May—” Hilda saw that Maybelle was
halfway down the stairs, a kimono pulled on, one bedroom slipper and
one riding boot, which latter nobody but herself seemed to
notice—“May, go back and step into this girl’s room; see if she
isn’t already packed to leave.”
“She—she is, Pa,” Maybelle was almost whimpering. “I’ve just been in
there. Everything she’s got is packed up.”
Then she was down the stairs in a rush, her arms around Hilda’s
neck, whispering,
“Don’t. Don’t give me away. Oh—Hilda! It won’t make any difference
to you. You don’t want to stay here, anyhow. But—”
Hilda pushed her off and turned to Colonel Marchbanks. Of course,
Maybelle’s things were packed, too; under that kimono Maybelle was
dressed, ready to have gone with that man.
“What Maybelle says is true,” she told them all, “I’m going to leave
in the morning.”
“You’ll leave for Lame Jones County in the morning,” the colonel
growled.
“Certainly. That’s what I mean,” Hilda agreed.
“Fayte, go dress,” said his father; “I want you to ride in to the
station and send a telegram to Pearsall. The rest of you get
upstairs to bed.”