The "board or so" to be replaced on the ice house, as Gordon had surmised,
proved to be extensive--a large section of the inner wall had rotted from
the constant dampness, the slowly seeping water. The ice house stood back
of the dwelling, by the side of the small barn and beyond a number of
apple trees: it was a square structure of boards, with no opening save a
low door under the peak of the roof with a small platform and exterior
flight of steps.
In the gloomy, dank interior a rough ladder, fastened to the wall, led
down to the falling level of soggy sawdust, embedded in which the
irregular pieces of ice were preserved against the summer. From the
interior the opening made a vivid square of blue sky; for long hours the
blue increased in brilliancy, after which, veiled in a greyer haze of
heat, the patch of sky grew gradually paler, and then clear; the
suggestion of immeasurable space deepened; above the dark hole of the ice
house the illimitable distance was appalling. Gordon was resting from the
sullen, muffled knocking of his hammer when a figure suddenly blotted out
the light, hid the sky. He recognized the sharply-cut silhouette of the
school-teacher.
"What a horrid, spooky place," she spoke with a shiver, peering within.
"It's cool," Gordon told her indifferently.
"And quiet," she added, seating herself upon the platform with an elbow in
the opening; "there's none of the bothersome clatter of a lot of
detestable children." She raised her voice in shrill mimicry, "'Teacher,
kin I be excused? Teacher!... Teacher--!'"
"Don't you like children?"
"I loathe them," she shot at him, out of the depths of a profound,
long-accumulated exasperation; "the muddy little beasts."
"Then I wouldn't be vexed with them."
"Do you like nailing boards in a rotten ice house?"
"Oh, I'm dog poor; I've got to take anything that comes along."
"And, you fool, do you suppose I'd be here if I had anything at all? Do
you suppose I'd stay in this damn lost hole if I could get anywhere else?
Do you think I have no more possibilities than this?"
He mounted the ladder, and emerged upon the platform by her side, where he
found a place, a minute, for a cigarette.
The woman's face was bitter, her body tense.
"I'll grow old and die in places like this," she continued passionately;
"I'll grow old and die in pokey, little schools, and wear prim calico
dresses, with a remade old white mull for commencements. I'll never hear
anything but twice two, and Persia is bounded on the north by,--with all
the world beyond, Paris and London and Egypt, for the lucky. I want to
live," she cried to Gordon Makimmon, idly curious, to the still branches
of the apple trees, the vista of village half-hid in dusty foliage. "I
want to see things, things different, not these dumb, depressing
mountains. I want to see life!"
Gordon had a swift memory of a city street grey in a reddening flood of
dawn, of his own voice in a reddening flood of dawn, of his own voice
mumbling out of an overwhelming, nauseous desperation that same
determination, desire. "Perhaps," he ventured, "you wouldn't think so much
of it when you'd seen it."
"Wouldn't I?" she exclaimed; "oh, wouldn't I?--smart crowds and gay
streets and shops on fire with jewels. That's where I belong; I'd show
them; I've got a style, if I only had a chance! I've got a
figure ... shoulders."
He appraised in a veiled glance her physical pretensions. He discovered,
to his surprise, that she had "shoulders"; her body resembled her hands,
it was smoothly rounded, provocative; its graceful proportion deceived
the casual eye.
With a disdainful motion she kicked off a heavily clumsy slipper--her
instep arched narrowly to a delicate ankle, the small heel was sharply
cut. "In silk," she said, "and a little brocaded slipper, you would see."
She replaced the inadequate thing of leather. The animation died from her
countenance, she surveyed him with cold eyes, narrowed lips. Her gaze, he
felt, included him in the immediate, hateful scene; she gained fresh
repugnance from his stained, collarless shirt, his bagging knees coated
with sawdust.
She rose, and, her skirt gathered in one hand, descended the precarious
flight of steps. She crossed the grass slowly, her head bent, her hands
tightly clenched.
Later, in the yard, Gordon saw, at a lighted, upper window, the silhouette
of her back, a gleam of white arm. The window cast an elongated rectangle
of warm light on the blue gloom of the grass. It illuminated him, with his
gaze lifted; and, while, standing in the open window, she saw him clearly,
she was as indifferent, as contemptuous of his presence, as though he had
been an animal. A film of cambric, golden in the lamplight, settled about
her smooth shoulders, fell in long diaphanous lines. She raised her arms
to her head, her hair slid darkly across her face, and she turned and
disappeared. He moved away, but the memory rankled delicately in his
imagination, returned the following morning. The thought lingered of that
body, as fine as ivory, unguessed, hidden, in a coarse sheath.