Rutherford Berry and Effie, Barnwell K. and the delicate Rose, left after
breakfast. Sim drove off behind the sturdy horse and Mrs. Caley was
audibly energetic in the kitchen. When Gordon appeared on the porch
Lettice was seated in the low rocker that had so often held Clare. She
responded in a suppressed voice to her husband's salutation. "You went and
spoiled Effie's whole visit," she informed him, "making Rutherford
drunk."
"Why," he protested, "we never; he just got himself drunk."
"It was mean anyway--sitting drinking all night in the stable."
"You'll say I was drunk too next."
"It doesn't matter to you what I say, or what I go through with. I've
stood more than I rightly ought, more than I'm going to--you must give me
one thought in a day. You just act low. Father was self-headed, but he was
never real trashy. He never got into fights at those common camp
meetings."
"I threw the stone that hit Buck, didn't I! I busted his head open, didn't
I! Oh, of course, I'm to blame for it all ... put it on me."
"Well, how did you get in it? how did you get mixed up with the
school-teacher?"
"I got Mrs. Caley to thank for this, and I'll thank her." He hotly recited
the obvious aspect of his connection at the camp meeting with Meta Beggs.
"It sounds all right as far as it goes," she retorted; "but I'll chance
there's a good deal more; I'll chance you had it made up to meet her
there. You would never have gone for any other reason; I don't believe you
have been to a revival for twenty years. You had it made up between you.
And that Miss Beggs is too smart for you, she'll fool you all over the
mountain. I don't like her either, and I don't want you to give her the
satisfaction of making up to you. It's what she'd like--laughing at my
back!"
"Miss Beggs never spoke any harm of you."
She made a gesture, hopeless, impatient, at his innocence. Her resentment
burst out again, "Why does she want to speak to you--another woman's
husband? Anybody knows it's low down. When did you see her? What did you
talk about?"
"Of course when I see her coming I ought to go 'round by South Fork," he
replied, heavily sarcastic.
"Well, you don't have to stand and talk like I warrant you do. There's
something deep about her look."
"I've taken care of myself for some years, and I guess I can keep on."
"You can if you want to go to ruin, like you were when I married you, and
you only had one shirt to your name."
"Throw it up to me. It's no wonder a man drinks here, he's got more to
forget than to think about." He stepped from the porch, preparing to
leave.
"Wait!" she commanded; "I'll put up with being left, and having you drink
all night with the beasts, and fooling my money away, but," her voice rose
and her eyes burned over dark shadows, "I won't put up with another woman,
I won't put up with that thin thing making over my husband. I won't! I
won't! do you understand that.... I--I can't."
He went around the corner of the house with her last words ringing in his
ears, kicking angrily at the rough sod. His house, between Mrs. Caley's
glum silence and Lettice's ceaseless complaining, was becoming
uninhabitable. And, as Rutherford Berry had pointed out, the latter would
only increase, sharpen, with the years. Lettice was a good wife, she was
not like Nickles' old woman, worthless but the pleasantest body you'd
meet in a day on a horse. She was not like Meta Beggs. He had never seen
any other like the latter. Lettice had said that she would fool him all
over the mountain ... but not him, not Gordon Makimmon, he thought
complacently.
He was well versed in the ways of women; he would not go a step that he
did not intend, understand. This business of Paris, for example: he might
tell Meta Beggs that he'd go, and then, at--say, Norfolk, he would change
his mind. Anyhow that was a plan worth considering. He recalled the
school-teacher's level, penetrating gaze; she was as smart as Lettice had
divined; he would have difficulty in fooling her. He felt obscurely that
any step taken with her would prove irrevocable.
Lettice kept at him and at him; after the baby arrived it would be no
better; there would be others; he regarded a succession of such periods, a
succession of babies, with marked disfavor. He had been detached for so
long from the restraints of commonplace, reputable relationships that they
grew increasingly irksome, they chafed the old, established freedom of
morals and action. Meta Beggs blew into fresh flame the embers of dying
years. And yet, as he had told her by the stream, an involuntary
lassitude, a new stiffness, had fallen upon his desire. Although his
marriage was burdensome it was an accomplished fact; Lettice's wishes,
her quality of steadfastness, exerted their influence upon him.
They operated now to increase his resentment; they formed an almost
detached disapproval situated within his own breast, a criticism of his
thoughts, his emotions, against which he vainly raged, setting himself
pointedly in its defiance.
He lounged past the Courthouse, past Peterman's hotel, to the post-office.
It was a small frame structure, with the wing of the postmaster's
residence extending from the back. At the right of the entrance was a
small show window holding two watches with shut, chased silver lids, and a
small pasteboard box lined with faded olive-colored plush containing two
plated nut crackers and six picks. The postmaster was the local jeweller.
Within, beyond the window which gave access to the governmental activities
a glass case rested on the counter. It was filled with an assortment of
trinkets--rings with large, highly-colored stones, wedding bands, gold
pins and bangles engraved with women's flowery names; and, laid by itself,
a necklace of looped seed pearls.
The latter captured Gordon's attention, it was so pale, and yet, at the
same time, so suggestive of elusive colors; it was so slender and
graceful, so finished, that it irresistibly recalled the person of Meta
Beggs.
"Let's see that string of pearls," he requested.
The postmaster laid it on top of the glass case. "The jobber sent it up
by accident," he explained; "I can't see anything to it--for the price;
it's too slimsy. I wouldn't advise it, Gord. Why, for thirty dollars, and
that's what it costs--diamond clasp, you can get a string of fish skin
pearls, experts can't tell 'em from original, as big as your finger end
that would go twice about the neck and then hang some."
The necklace slipped coldly through Gordon Makimmon's hand; it reminded
him of a small, pearly snake with a diamond head; it increasingly reminded
him of Meta Beggs. She loved jewelry. If she had kissed him for a pair of
silk stockings--
"I think I'll take it," he decided slowly; "I don't know if I've got her
right here in my pants."
"Now, Gordon," the other heartily reassured him, "whenever you like. Of
course it's a fine article--all strung on gold wire. I won't be surprised
but Lettice'll think it's elegant. I often wondered why you didn't stop in
lately and look over my stock; ladies put a lot on such little trifles."
Meta Beggs would have to wear it under her dress in Greenstream, he
realized; perhaps she had better not wear it at all until she was out of
the valley. He would clasp the pearls about that smooth, round throat....
The postmaster wrapped the pearls into a small, square package, talking
voluminously. A new driver of the Stenton stage had lost a mail bag, he
had lamed a horse--a satisfactory driver had not been discovered since
Gordon ... left. He had heard of a law restraining the sale of patent
medicines, of Snibbs' Mixture, and what the local drinkers would do,
already deprived of the more legitimate forms of spirituous refreshment,
was difficult to say. The postmaster predicted they would take to "dope."
Then there was to be a sap-boiling over on the western mountain, to-morrow
night, at old man Entriken's.... Everybody had been invited; if the
weather was ugly it would take place the first clear spell.
Sap-boilings, Gordon knew, held late in spring in the maple groves, lasted
all night. Baskets of food were driven to the scene; the fires under the
great, iron kettles were kept replenished; everybody stirred the bubbling
sap, ate, gabbled; the young people even danced on the grass.
It was a romantic ceremonial: the unusual hours of its celebration, the
mystery of night in close groves lit by the stars temporarily unsettled
life from its prosaic, arduous journey toward the inevitable, blind
termination. It moved the thoughts into unwonted fantasy, the heart to
new, unguessed possibilities. For that night established values, life-long
habits, negations, prudence, were set at naught.
Gordon wondered whether Meta Beggs would be there? He would like to be
with her at a sap-boiling, in the sooty shadows. With the necklace of
seed pearls in his pocket he walked over the street revolving in his mind
the problem of asking her to accompany him. He could not hope to hide it
from Lettice; and, to-day, he had recognized a note of finality in his
wife's voice with regard to the school-teacher. If he went with Meta Beggs
serious trouble would ensue in his home ... he wished to avoid any actual
outbreak with Lettice. He remembered, tardily, her condition; it would be
dangerous for her. He might, conceivably, at some time or another, go
away; even to Paris--yet, at that latter thought, the wish, almost the
necessity, of a return lingered at the back of his brain--but he would not
goad her into an explosion of misery and temper. He acknowledged to
himself, with a faint glow of pride, that he was not anxious to encounter
Lettice Makimmon's full displeasure; she possessed the capability of
tenacity, an iron-like resolve, inherited from old Pompey.
In the outcome his difficulty was unexpectedly solved for him--a large
farm wagon, with boards temporarily laid from side to side, was to convey
a quantity of people, and among them Meta Beggs, from the village to the
sap-boiling. He learned this from the idlers before the _Bugle_ office.
Sitting with his chair canted against that dingy wooden facade he thought
of the school-teacher and the coming night. It was late afternoon of the
day on which he had bought the necklace. The small package still rested in
his pocket. It had been his intention to give the pearls to Meta Beggs
before he returned to his home, but no opportunity had offered. After
school she had passed the seated row of men, uneasily stirring their hats
in response to her collected greeting; and, with Mrs. Peterman, gone into
the body of the hotel. Gordon could not follow her. Anyhow, the
presentation could be made with better effect in the obscurity of the
maples to-morrow night ... her gratitude could have fuller sweep.
He made his way finally, reluctantly, home. There, alone in the bedroom,
he swiftly withdrew the necklace from its pasteboard box, and dropped it
into the pocket of a coat hanging in the curtained wardrobe. It was, he
noted, the checked suit with the red thread, the one he would wear to the
sap-boiling. He heard approaching footsteps, and, hastily crumpling the
paper and small box into a compact unit, he flung it into a corner of the
wardrobe, behind a heap of linen.