On the evening of the great day, Jerry and Judith took the baby and
his bottles over to Aunt Mary Blackford, who was only too glad to
have charge of the little darling. Judith felt as happy and excited
as though to-morrow was to be her wedding day. She was unrestrainedly
voluble even to Aunt Mary. When she and Jerry got home, they scrubbed
themselves in the washtub, laid out their clean clothes, and went to
bed, setting the alarm for two o'clock.
When they heard the alarm clock's noisy ting-a-ling, they jumped out of
bed as eagerly as two children on Christmas morning. It was one thing
to get up early to set tobacco and a much easier thing to get up early
to make a trip to Georgetown. They had breakfast and did up the morning
chores by lamp and lantern light; and it was still night, with no light
but that of the stars when Jerry tied the lantern underneath the cart
and they clambered in and started Nip up the steep path that led to the
ridge road.
The path was full of the smell of damp earth and growing grass, mingled
from time to time with the heavy scent of flowering locust trees. As
they swung out onto the smooth pike, the first rays of the sun came
slanting across the fields, casting long morning shadows. To Judith
there was something vastly exhilarating about this driving out of the
night, out of the creeping gray, out of the dimly growing twilight
into the full blue and gold glory of the morning. She had a sense of
infinite freedom and gaiety, as though the whole world had become a
holiday place. It was the first time that she had been away from the
baby since he was born eleven months before. Out of pure exuberance she
began to sing:
Oh, the bumblebee is a busy bird,
He bumbles all araoun',
He sucks the honey off'n the flower
An' puts it in the graoun'.
Jerry too whistled with joy of the spring morning. But it did not
mean to him what it did to Judith. His nature did not respond to the
stimulation of natural things; and he had not been shut up in the
little house in the hollow all winter. To him the drive was only a
little more enjoyable than many other recent drives; and the sway of
the cart, the rattle of the wheels and the rhythmic pounding of Nip's
hoofs did not mean to him, as to Judith, a triumphal progress.
She was wearing a new dress of white with tiny red dots, and a
sunbonnet that she had cunningly contrived out of a big red bandana
handkerchief. Under the red sunbonnet her dark yet delicate beauty
glowed like the silken flame of a poppy.
Standing back behind its two gloomy hemlock trees, the little shanty
in which Jabez Moorhouse lived was brightened into silver gray by the
morning sunshine and smoke was pouring from the chimney. A few hens
scratched about the door, and a white-breasted collie sunned himself on
the step and looked intelligently about. Jabez was in the yard chopping
wood to feed his morning fire. Half of his shirt tail hung out of his
overalls, as it nearly always did, and his head and hairy chest were
bare. He paused in his chopping as the cart came rattling gaily along
the road and waved his hand to the young couple, who waved back to him.
After they had passed he stood watching the retreating cart till it
disappeared around a bend in the road.
A strange thought suddenly took possession of Judith. She found herself
wishing that it was Uncle Jabez who was sitting beside her instead of
Jerry. Together she and Uncle Jabez would notice all sorts of things;
and they would point them out to each other and laugh and wonder and
enjoy the beauty and strangeness of the world. Jerry was different. For
a moment she felt cold and dreary.
As they trotted past Uncle Ezra's long white mansion, they glimpsed
Cissy's face pressed close to the little kitchen window.
Jogging along toward Clayton, they saw the smoke of breakfast fires
curling up in white columns and vanishing into the blue. About the
houses that they passed dogs were barking, roosters crowing, and hens
cackling. Men were leading horses to water, women milking, and children
picking up chips around the chopping block.
"I'll bet Joe's most there by this time," said Jerry, as they swung out
of Clayton. "He said he was a-goin' to leave at midnight so's to be
there fer the fust tradin'. Funny the way he does. He hain't never got
the money to buy nuthin, an' he hain't got much to trade with neither.
An' yet he don't hardly miss a Court Day in a year; an' he's baound to
be there fer the fust dog shootin'. An' Gawd, haow he does drink! He
says it helps him to fergit his troubles."
"It looks like Bessie Maud don't git much chanct to fergit _her_
troubles."
"Well, she makes 'em fer herse'f."
It was about nine o'clock when they pulled up in the main street of
Georgetown and gave Nip a drink from the fountain. They had traveled a
little over twenty miles.
"We'll tie up in there," said Jerry, nodding sidewise in the direction
of a grassy back street. "It's a nice, quiet place to eat our lunch,
an' there's grass fer Nip."
Judith sprang out of the cart and together they started out to see the
town.
Trading was already in full swing. The main street was lined on both
sides by buggies and spring wagons, with here and there an automobile.
The side streets, too, were quickly filling up, as farmers' rigs of
various kinds came rattling into town looking for a place to tie up.
Riders galloped along the street, sometimes leading one or more horses
behind them. And in a vacant lot that flanked one of the hotels a human
ring had formed itself around a group of restive mountain cattle in the
midst of which a sun-browned young fellow was gesticulating and talking
loudly. From this ring one could see the back quarters of the hotel
piled with heaps of boxes, crates, old lumber, and refuse swarmed over
by flies. From the inevitable large pile of scrap iron and tin cans, a
few as yet unrusted surfaces reflected the sun's rays like mirrors.
The street in front of the hotel was thronged with a crowd of men
wearing, not the clothes they put on for funerals, but something a
little better than the clay-caked overalls of daily wear. The swinging
doors of the bar were already active on their limber hinges, and a
smell of beer oozed out into the street, carrying a suggestion of kegs
and coolness.
As they passed these swinging doors, Joe Barnaby came out, wiping his
mouth on the back of his hand.
"Howdy, there, yo'all. You jes come?"
"Jes tied up," said Jerry.
"Me I bin here this two hours past. There's bin some mighty smart
tradin' a-goin' on. Two bunches o' maounting cattle sold dirt cheap. If
I had a place o' my own I'd like to git me a few head o' them maounting
cattle an' slick 'em up with good feed an' mate 'em to a short horned
bull. They'd sell good when they come fresh, an' there'd be money in
it. But anybody can't do nuthin 'ithout capital. The young uns eats up
everything I kin make fast's I make it. So there you are. 'Ithout land
or capital a feller goes raound year after year the same old turns,
like a squirrel in a cage, an' comes back at the end right where he
started from."
It was not at all like Joe to make so long a speech; and both of his
listeners looked at him a little surprised. The smell of mingled beer
and whiskey on his breath gave the explanation.
Georgetown could boast of a population of only a scant five thousand.
But with the crowded streets and the bustle and activity of Court Day,
it was a metropolis to these dwellers in lonely hollows. The three
strolled along, looking curiously at the people they met and being
looked at by them in turn. It was an excitement to see so many of their
kind at once. Most of these people wore in their eyes and about their
mouths that look of vague, mild blankness characteristic of country
people in Kentucky. The attention of every one was divided between
the crowds and the shop windows, in which the Georgetown tradesmen
had cunningly placed on view such articles as they considered would
most appeal to the Court Day crowds. The hardware merchants had taken
their lawn mowers, carpet sweepers, and phonographs to the back of the
store, and displayed instead rows of cheap, tin-plated wash-boilers,
gray enameled sauce pans, sheep shears, tobacco knives, hoes, rakes,
shovels, and cheap butcher knives. The windows of the dry-goods stores
were full of overalls, corduroy trousers, work shirts, apron ginghams,
and sleazy but bright colored calicoes. The two druggists had withdrawn
their tooth brushes, toilet soaps, and cosmetics, and vied with each
other in a tempting array of patent medicines, nursing bottles, sheep
dips, and veterinary remedies.
The Town Hall, where the Court sat, showed unusual signs of activity.
Boys swarmed over the stone steps; and one of the two policemen of the
town walked up and down the sidewalk in front of the entrance. From
time to time some one would hurry up or down the steps. More likely
than not such person was baldish, parchment skinned, dressed in a rusty
black suit, and carrying a leather satchel.
On every side there was uproar. Horses whinneyed and neighed, wheels
rattled, small boys yodeled for joy of the crowds and excitement. From
every direction came the sound of men's voices proclaiming loudly in
the familiar phrases of the horse trader the virtues of the animals
that they had to sell or trade.
Listening to the peans of the traders, one would be led to believe
that all the horses for sale or trade were splendid animals, young,
healthy, vigorous, and docile. A glance around, however, belied this
impression. Very few conformed in any way with the descriptions of
their enthusiastic would-be vendors. There were old horses with hanging
heads and sagging haunches, bowed like an old man at the knees and
shoulders. There were vicious horses, with evil, suspicious eyes and
ears that they laid back ominously. There were weak, spindly horses,
with no breadth to their backs and haunches that sloped away into
nothing, like the shoulder of a ringleted mid-Victorian female. There
were old race horses, once good for the track, now good for nothing
whatever. There were horses with clumsy, ill-shaped legs and awkward
feet, that could hardly raise one hoof without setting it down on
another. There were horses, naturally of good disposition, which had
been made irritable and vicious by bad training. There were horses with
all sorts of bad habits. There were horses with the heaves, horses with
ringbone, spavin, stringhalt, and a dozen other equine diseases and
defects.
The really good horses were very few in number; because a good horse
can readily be sold near home and for a good price. The farmer used
Court Day as an occasion for trying to get rid of the maimed, the halt,
the blind, and the aged.
Everybody knew this; and yet everybody who had a little money in his
pocket and many who had none at all, bought and traded horses on
Court Day. It had become a passion which swayed in spite of reason,
like the lure of the lottery or the seduction of the gaming table.
Horse trading, with the drinking which accompanied it, was to these
lonely tobacco growers their one joyful extravagance. It was their
dissipation, their romance, their single oblation to the god of life
and joy.
Around the corner of a side street, the Blackford party glimpsed Uncle
Sam Whitmarsh in conversation with a lithe young man wearing a broad
felt hat over a face that betokened life in the open air. Each man was
holding the bridle of a horse. Coming up to see what it was all about,
they found that a trade was in progress.
Uncle Sam was never so taken up with a trade that he had no time
for his friends. He beamed a welcome on his good neighbors and his
son-in-law.
"Howdy, Jerry. Howdy, Joe. Waal, Judy, you're a-lookin' like a rose in
May. You don't mind a old man like me tellin' yer wife she's handsome,
do you, Jerry?... No, stranger, the mare's too light. I hain't got no
youst for her no more'n a hen has for teeth."
The horse that Uncle Sam held by the bridle was a heavily built iron
gray work horse apparently about twelve years old. He was a bit clumsy
looking, but on the whole sound and healthy in appearance.
The stranger's horse was a beautiful cream colored mare with large,
intelligent eyes, small ears, a gracefully arched neck and slim
yet strong looking legs, the very perfection indeed of shape and
proportion. Not even a track horse could be daintier in appearance.
Uncle Sam tried to look at the animal with disdainful indifference;
but for all his experience in the art of dissimulation, he could not
keep out of his eyes a covert gleam that glinted of admiration and
coveteousness.
"I'd suttenly never dream o' lettin' her go under a hundred," the young
trader was saying. "But I jes can't take her a step fu'ther 'ithout
shoes, an' I hain't got the money to git her shoes. I've had hard luck
lately, stranger. Gawd, what hard luck I've had! Many a time this past
month my three babies hain't had all they cud eat; an' me an' my wife
has gone hungry fer days together. The two linin's o' my pocket has got
to know each other good these past weeks. Lookit the shoes I got on,
willyuh? I can't git shoes fer myse'f, let alone fer the mare."
Uncle Sam looked down at the shoes and saw that they were badly scuffed
and that the young man's foot was bulging from a slit in the leather on
the side of one of them. A good deal of the stitching on the other one
had come loose; and it was laced with a shaggy scrap of binder twine.
Whether the soles were through or not Uncle Sam could not see.
"An' lookit my shirt. It's the on'y shirt I got, I swear it is; an' it
hain't a-goin' to cover my nakedness much longer."
He turned around with a broad grin and showed a long slit over the
shoulder blade, through which his healthy, sun-browned skin shone with
a satiny sheen.
"Naw, even if she didn't have nothin' the matter with her feet, the
mare's too light. I hain't got no youst fer her."
Uncle Sam took a sidewise step, spat over the edge of the curb, and
made as if to jump into the saddle.
"I tell yuh, an' I'd swear it on the Holy Book, there hain't a thing
the matter with them there front feet. The poor beast's footsore,
that's all's wrong with her. If you'd come from Williamstown this
mornin' 'ithout shoes, wouldn't you be dead on yer feet? Gawd, them
rough, stony roads is hard on a good shod hoss, let alone one that
hain't got no shoes at all. I wouldn't think o' tradin' fer that
awkward lout o' yourn, not fer a minit if it wa'n't he's new shod. I
gotta be on the road to-night agin, an' I gotta have a hoss that kin
travel along."
"Naw, she hain't nuthin to me. She's too light."
"But look what a beauty she is! Wouldn't you be praoud to drive a hoss
like that? Wouldn't yer wife be praoud to drive her? Lookit the color
of her. Look haow she holds her head. Lookit them round haunches.
Lookit them slim, dainty legs. If she hain't sound an' perfect in wind
an' limb you kin take this las' shirt off'n my back."
"Naw, I can't use her."
Uncle Sam made another move toward the saddle.
"I'll let you have her for twenty-five dollars boot. Bejasus, that's
givin' her away. But what kin a man do when his pocket's flat? A baby
kin have the best of him."
For about the twentieth time Uncle Sam looked into the horse's mouth
and assured himself again that she was in very truth only five years
old. Then he carefully ran his practised hand down each of her legs,
feeling for bumps and finding none. Then he meditatively scratched his
head.
"Waal, I tell yuh, stranger," he said, after a long period of
deliberation. "I hain't got a passell of use fer the mare; but I'll
give yuh five dollars boot. That's the best I kin do."
After a great deal of further parley, they compromised on ten dollars
boot. Uncle Sam took two five dollar bills out of his well worn
billfold and handed them to the trader, put his own saddle and bridle
on the cream colored mare, wished the young man the best of luck, and
the trade was made.
By this time it was getting on toward noon, and they went to the
place where they had left the horse and cart to eat their lunch. Joe
and Uncle Sam accompanied them, unfolding the lunches that they had
brought in their coat pockets; and the four made a festive picnic
meal together, supplementing what they had brought from home with
peppermint drops and ginger snaps contributed by Uncle Sam, who was
always a free spender on holiday occasions.
As they were eating, Uncle Sam entertained the little company with the
tale of how he had that morning started out from home with a pocket
knife and by a series of successful trades ended by possessing a fine
new Colt automatic. He drew the revolver out of his pocket and caressed
its smooth surfaces with his finger tips, a satisfied smile spreading
over his foxy, fun-loving, and kindly face.
"The knife wa'n't a heap o' good," he said in his deliberate drawl. "So
I up an' swapped it fer a dawg. I knowed I'd sholy have trouble gittin'
the dawg back home, me bein' on hossback; so I traded him fer a watch.
I had a purty good notion the watch wa'n't no timekeeper; so I traded
it to Tom Pooler fer hisn that I knowed was a good un. Then I traded
the watch fer a shot gun. It was a good shot gun; but I got two shot
guns home; so I looked raound till I faound this here trade. She's a
beauty an' she's jes the same as new."
He fondled the blue metal of the little death dealer with loving
fingers.
"An' that's a rare beauty of a little animal I got yonder," he went on,
nodding sidewise toward the cream colored mare. "When she gits shoes
on her feet, she'll be fine as a fiddle. All in all, I'm praoud of
to-day's tradin'. Some folks, 'specially wimmin, thinks a trader lives
a idle life. But I tell yuh, tradin' hain't sech child's play. It takes
hard work an' stickin' at it--an' it takes injinooity."
Uncle Sam's eyes turned meditatively inward and reposed upon himself,
apparently not ill pleased with what they saw there.
"An' that there young feller thinks he's got a work hoss off'n me,"
he went on, musingly rubbing his lean chin with his lean hand.
"Howsomever, 'twa'n't me that clipped the harness marks onto him. It
was Edd Patton done it after he faound the hoss wouldn't work nohaow.
All I done was jes to keep 'em trimmed a little."
After the meal was over, the three men sauntered away on manly
pursuits, their steps leading them in the direction of the swinging
bar door; and Judith was left to gather up the remains of the meal.
As she was doing this, she saw the young man who had just traded with
Uncle Sam come up and join the party belonging to a covered wagon
which had tied up a few yards away. They were evidently his wife and
three children; and the five ate dinner together, boiling coffee and
frying bacon and eggs over a little gipsy fire of twigs and chips built
between two large stones. The young trader seemed to be in high spirits
and laughed and played light heartedly with the children. He recognized
Judith as the young woman who he had seen standing by while he was
trading; and frankly admiring her youthful good looks, he cast several
bold glances in her direction, which his wife tactfully pretended not
to notice.
After the meal was over, he went away again. Judith, giving herself up
to an after dinner feeling of pleasant languor, sat on the grass under
the big beech tree and watched the three little girls as they played
house with a piece of board for a table and a handful of flat pebbles
for dishes. Their mother, a faded, harassed looking woman, who was
probably in the late twenties, although she looked much older, gathered
up the broken egg shells and threw them on the fire, washed the gray
enameled mugs and plates and put them away in the covered wagon. The
three little girls were named Curlena, Sabrina, and Aldina. The faded
mother, when she had occasion to speak to the children, called them by
these names in a way which suggested that she derived pleasure from the
sound of the long, euphonious, and unusual appellations.
After dinner lethargy does not last long in the young; and Judith soon
grew tired of sitting idly under the tree. She got up, shook out her
skirts, felt to make sure that she still had her little purse in her
pocket, and started toward the town.
As she passed the covered wagon she paused; for country people do not
go by each other without a word of greeting.
"Howdy, ma'am. You come from far?"
"From Williamstown this mornin', ma'am. My husband's a hoss trader an'
he follers the court days. We're most allus on the road."
"You like the road?"
"No, ma'am. My husband likes it well enough; but I hain't never cared
fer the road. It's a hard life--'specially with three young uns; an'
you can't have things much better'n what the gipsies do. 'Tain't so bad
purty weather like this; but then comes rains an' we have to take to
somebody's barn, an' sometimes stuck there fer four or five days hand
runnin'. It's hard then to dry the young uns' clothes an' to git any
kind o' warm cooked food fer 'em. An' if they was to fall sick, I dunno
what I would do. I'm allus glad when winter comes an' we have to go
into lodgings somewhere. But 'tain't like havin' your own home."
"Would you rather your husband was a farmer?"
"'Deed I would, ma'am," answered the woman eagerly. She seemed to be
glad to have some one of her own sex to talk to. "There hain't nothin'
I'd like better'n to have a little home o' my own an' never have to
move out'n it. I'd have flowers in the yard an' lace curtains on the
front winders; an' I'd keep my three little gals dressed nice an' have
a white cloth on the table. But seems like folks hain't in this world
to git what they want, 'specially wimmin. Well, it's the men that has
to earn the livin', an' I s'pose they gotta do it the way seems best to
'em."
She sighed resignedly.
Judith felt sorry for the woman. To some extent she could understand
her point of view. It was as if sister Lizzie May, with all her
finnicky little housewifely instincts, had fallen to be the wife of a
wandering horse trader. She herself thought the life would be a jolly
one, if one had no babies.
She turned away with a word of good-by and went on into Main Street,
where she made delightful explorations in the dry-goods stores. Here
in the dim coolness that smelt alluringly of new cotton goods, she
wandered around with other back country women, fingering this and
admiring that and looking lingeringly at the things that she was not
able to buy.
Most of these women were stolid-faced, ungainly, flat-footed creatures,
even the young ones wearing a heavy, settled expression, as though they
realized in a dim way that life held nothing further in store for them.
Some carried babies on their hips or had older children peeping shyly
from behind their skirts, overawed by the strange surroundings. They
looked at and fingered the pretty voiles, ginghams, and summer silks,
then bought unbleached muslin, dress lengths of calico and spools of
white cotton thread.
Judith bought some bright calico for dresses for the baby, and a piece
of embroidered white muslin to make him a bonnet and a Sunday dress.
Then, not being able to resist a certain pretty flowered muslin gay
with pink rosebuds, she bought enough of it to make a dress for herself.
As she was loitering along Main Street looking into the shop windows,
Bob Crupper came up from behind and looked at her admiringly with his
boyish eyes.
"Hey, Judy, what you a-doin' here in the big taown?"
"Same thing you're a-doin', I reckon: a-loafin' an' a-idlin' an'
a-spendin' what little money I got."
"Yaas, I expect that's about what we're all a-doin'," said Bob, and
walked along beside her.
Now and then they saw in the crowd the familiar face of some one from
their neighborhood; and Judith was conscious each time of a certain
constraint in the look and greeting of these people, which would not
have been there if she had been alone. Since her marriage she had begun
to learn that a married woman cannot appear in the company of any man
other than her husband without "making talk." She looked at the people
she knew, from under her heavy eyebrows, with a challenging boldness
that was half amusement, half irritation.
In front of the Town Hall they met Jerry, who turned and joined them.
She caught the same expression on Jerry's face. This look which had
caused her only a vague annoyance when seen on the faces of the
neighbors, brought a surge of quick anger, when she saw it sneaking
out of Jerry's eyes; and she began to joke and banter with Bob in a
hectic way quite unbecoming to a married woman of the tobacco country.
Her gaiety sent Jerry into a fit of the sulks; and he walked along
beside them silent and glowering. The more he sulked and glowered, the
more feverishly Judith laughed and joked. The smell of whiskey, that
powerful stimulant of the male propensities, was strong on the breath
of both the young men, and was in a great measure responsible for Bob's
animation and Jerry's sullenness. Judith, however, was not intoxicated,
and did not know enough about the effect of alcohol to make it an
excuse for her husband's behavior. Under her levity there lurked a
growing spirit of quite sober and very cold appraisal.
When they reached the place where Nip and the cart were waiting, the
young horse trader had come back and was busy greasing his wagon and
making other preparations for pulling out. He looked at Judith again
but not quite so boldly, out of respect for her husband's presence.
Obeying that magnetism which draws people of the same sex together, the
three men gathered in a little knot beside the trader's wagon and began
to talk about horses, saddles, and guns. Judith went over to the woman,
who had spread a gunny sack on the grass and was sitting on it mending
one of her little girl's dresses, and they began to talk of babies, of
cooking, and patterns for pieced bedquilts.
As the woman prattled scarcely heeded at her side, Judith felt stirring
strongly within her a deep exaltation. The break in the deadening
monotony of her days had affected her like a strong stimulant and she
was keenly alive to things, tasting deliciously the full savor of life.
She had forgotten her irritation at Jerry. All her perceptions seemed
strangely sharpened. Her eyes took delight in noting niceties of tone
and line and color, things for which she had no words but which were
becoming with each year of mental growth more pregnant with suggestion.
She was so taken up with the delight of gazing about that she hardly
noticed that Joe Barnaby had passed by and beckoned Jerry away,
probably for the purpose of some further communion of spirits over the
bar. Still less did she observe that after Jerry's departure the two
men beside the covered wagon looked several times in her direction and
dropped their voices to a very low tone. The trader's wife prattled on.
Suddenly and quite without warning, the whole scene went black before
her. Against this blackness certain words stood out bright red. Her ear
had caught only these few words; but they made the meaning of the whole
sentence just spoken by Bob Crupper quite unmistakable.
When the black melted and she could see again, she felt herself
tingling all over as if pricked by a million needles. She looked
sidewise at the trader's wife to see if she had heard. The woman was
running on about how hard it was to keep children in garters, too
busy with her own chatter to notice anything said by anybody else.
Judith knew that she was spared this much at least. She got up, made
a stammered excuse about something that she had forgotten to buy, and
almost ran from the hateful place.
She did not go toward the town, but in the direction of the deserted
back streets. Among these she walked, at first with feverish haste,
stumbling over clods and stones; then more slowly, as her rage and
burning sense of insult subsided into dejection and misery. As she
walked, she went over certain things in her mind. She saw Bob Crupper
and Luke Wolf standing in easy attitudes by the spring wagon down in
Hat's hollow. Bob said something to Luke, who turned and looked at her,
and the two men fell to laughing together. She remembered certain looks
from Luke that she had accidentally caught while they were stripping
tobacco. She could see his little pig eyes squinting at her above his
fat red cheeks. She called to mind all the details of Bob's visit to
the house in the hollow. She remembered other things: whispers, looks,
dark sayings that she had thought nothing of at the time; but that
now flashed out of the past with vivid and sinister significance.
She saw again the looks of the people that she had met on the street
that afternoon while walking beside Bob. They were all too clearly
explained by these few words that her ear had inadvertently caught
and that now seemed to be burnt into her brain. It was the talk of
the neighborhood, then; and there was only one person who could have
betrayed the secret. It was desperately hard for her to force herself
to this conclusion; but she made herself admit that it was the only one
possible. That spirit in her which gave her eyes their level, searching
look, which made her see through the flimsy shams and hypocrisies and
self-deceptions of the people about her, forced her to look at her own
situation with the same undeviating gaze.
She wandered about through sleepy, grass-grown back streets and lanes
drowsing in the hot afternoon sunshine and deserted as a graveyard. She
met nobody but an old man hobbling with the aid of two crutches. She
had a feeling that the old man looked at her as if he knew and blushed
furiously when she accidentally met his eye.
She took no note of the passing of time, and did not see that the
shadows had begun to grow long, when she heard Jerry's voice anxiously
calling her name and immediately after saw him appear around the corner
of a fence.
"Hey, Judy! What the devil?" In his tone was the irritation which
follows upon relieved anxiety. "Where you bin a-hidin' to? I bin
a-lookin' all over taown fer you. I was beginnin' to think sumpin'd
happened you."
Without waiting an instant, she turned upon him and accused him of what
he had done. Even while she accused him, she felt herself buoyed up by
a quite unreasonable hope that he would be able to deny her charge.
The sight of him had for the moment restored her confidence in him.
The moment, however, was a short one. Instantly she saw by his face
that it was true, unbelievably but inexorably true. He stood before her
sheepish, contrite and ashamed.
"Why did you do it?"
She flashed the words at him as if each one was a sword.
"Judy, I was drunk. It happened a long time ago, afore we was married;
an' it was about the one time in my life I bin drunk enough not to
keep my tongue in my head. Even so I could a bit it off soon's I'd said
it."
She turned without a word and started to walk back toward the town.
Disgust, like an avalanche of dirty dish water, put out the clear flame
of her anger. The one thought left in her mind was that she was going
back only because she had to go where the baby was. Jerry came up
beside her and tried to take her hand; but she snatched it away and put
it behind her back.
"Judy, it ain't sech a _dreadful_ thing," he pleaded. "Course I hadn't
otta done it, an' I wouldn't if I hadn't been drunk. But if you knowed
haow most men is, an' haow they brag about everything like that, an'
oftentimes when there hain't a bit o' truth in it, you wouldn't think
so hard of me for one little slip."
He went on in this way, stumblingly trying to convince her that he
was not a monster. But his pleadings fell on deaf ears, hard, young,
intolerant ears that had learned from life no principles of judgment,
yet were all too eager to judge. It was impossible for Jerry, out of
his small experience of life and with the few words at his command, to
tell her how deeply rooted in the young male is the urge to publish
abroad his sexual achievements. She felt only that he was low, vile,
and contemptible, no better than his cronies, the drunken young loafers
whom he had, with such an unspeakable lack of delicacy, taken into his
confidence, and who had been busy ever since rolling her secret on
their dirty tongues. She loathed the whole odious pack of them, Jerry
more than the rest. She walked on beside him silent and cold, without
answering a word. Being able to make no impression on her with his
pleading, Jerry too fell into sullen silence, musing on how hard she
was. He felt chilled by a feeling that she was far away, that she did
not belong to him, that she never had and never would belong to him as
he did to her. A bitter feeling of estrangement and mutual distrust
grew out of the silence like a dividing wall.
Turning the corner, they came upon Uncle Sam talking to Joe Barnaby
and holding the bridle of a stolid, heavily built plow horse, not over
young, but healthy and tough looking and apparently good for many more
years of useful labor.
"What's went with the purty mare?" asked Jerry, trying with poor
success to make his voice sound natural.
"She's changed hands, bless her shapely carcass," laughed Uncle Sam.
"This here is one time when the old man was trimmed good, Jerry. After
I left here, I took her over to John Hornby, the blacksmith, to git her
shod, an' he ses to me:
"'Sam,' ses he, 'you're jes about the eleventh sucker that's brought me
that there mare to hev her shod through this past winter an' spring.
I'd jes as leave steal stovewood out'n a widder's back yard, Sam, as
charge yuh money to put shoes on the feet o' that there animal.'
"'What's wrong with her?' I asks, anxious like.
"'What's wrong with her is she hain't no good fer nothin' whatever.
She's track horse stock, but I wouldn't back her agin a mud turtle.
She's part paralyzed in them there front legs. Everybody buys her
thinks she's footsore; but after they've kep her a spell they find
she's got a footsoreness that don't wear off. She's a purty animal an'
it's a pity she's that way. But that's the way she is.'
"'Thanks, John,' I ses. 'I allus knowed you wuz a friend o' mine.' An'
I leads the mare away.
"Twa'n't twenty minutes after I'd left the blacksmith's shop afore I
had her traded fer this feller. He hain't no beauty, an' he hain't no
fancy saddle hoss; but he's a hoss I kin use on my place. An' when I
hain't got use fer him, I kin allus trade him easy. He's a good, solid,
dependable beast, hain't you, Dobbin?"
He patted the horse's gray neck affectionately.
The sun was beginning to slant low in the sky, and a cool late
afternoon breeze had sprung up. Carts and buggies and spring wagons
rattled through the streets on their way toward the open country; and
horsemen cantered past them, going in the same direction. Uncle Sam
mounted his plow horse and with a farewell wave of the hand trotted
ponderously away with the rest of the procession.
Jerry and Judith followed in the cart. As they passed through Main
Street they were greeted by pervasive scents of stale beer and whiskey.
The ground was littered with lunch wrappings, egg and peanut shells,
and banana skins. The crowd had thinned out. Most of the family
parties had already started for home; and of the unattached males
who remained some were reeling and lurching about the sidewalk noisy
with drunken laughter and ribaldry, others stood propped up against a
hydrant or a telegraph pole, portentously solemn and self-important,
arguing in declamatory fashion with companions as ridiculously drunk as
themselves. Here and there a little knot had formed about men who were
quarreling over some fancied grievance, their angry voices rising harsh
and ominous as the whiskey seethed in their fuddled brains and they
strode threateningly nearer each other and gripped the handles of the
revolvers in their pockets.
Through the hubbub of this sordid bacchanalia the young couple drove in
cold and sullen aloofness and passed out into the heavy silence of the
country.