BLOOD
Joe had debated the matter fully in his mind before going in to supper.
Since he had sent her tempter away, there was no necessity of taking
Ollie to task, thus laying bare his knowledge of her guilty secret. He
believed that her conscience would prove its own flagellant in the days
to come, when she had time to reflect and repent, away from the
debauching influence of the man who had led her astray. His blame was
all for Morgan, who had taken advantage of her loneliness and
discontent.
Joe now recalled, and understood, her reaching out to him for sympathy;
he saw clearly that she had demanded something beyond the capacity of
his unseasoned heart to give. Isom was to blame for that condition of
her mind, first and most severely of all. If Isom had been kind to her,
and given her only a small measure of human sympathy, she would have
clung to him, and rested in the shelter of his protection, content
against all the world. Isom had spread the thorns for his own feet, in
his insensibility to all human need of gentleness.
Joe even doubted, knowing him as he did, whether the gray old miser was
capable of either jealousy or shame. He did not know, indeed, what Isom
might say to it if his wife's infidelity became known to him, but he
believed that he would rage to insanity. Perhaps not because the sting
of it would penetrate to his heart, but in his censure of his wife's
extravagance in giving away an affection which belonged, under the form
of marriage and law, to him.
Joe was ashamed to meet Ollie at the table, not for himself, but for
her. He was afraid that his eyes, or his manner, might betray what he
knew. He might have spared himself this feeling of humiliation on her
account, for Ollie, all unconscious of his discovery, was bright and
full of smiles. Joe could not rise to her level of light-heartedness,
and, there being no common ground between them, he lapsed into his
old-time silence over his plate.
After supper Joe flattened himself against the kitchen wall where he had
sat the night before on the bench outside the door, drawing back into
the shadow. There he sat and thought it over again, unsatisfied to
remain silent, yet afraid to speak. He did not want to be unjust, for
perhaps she did not intend to meet Morgan at all. In addition to this
doubt of her intentions, he had the hope that Isom would come very soon.
He decided at length that he would go to bed and lie awake until he
heard Ollie pass up to her room, when he would slip down again and wait.
If she came down, he would know that she intended to carry out her part
of the compact with Morgan. Then he could tell her that Morgan would not
come.
Ollie was not long over her work that night. When Joe heard her door
close, he took his boots in his hand and went downstairs. He had left
his hat on the kitchen table, according to his nightly custom; the
moonlight coming in through the window reminded him of it as he passed.
He put it on, thinking that he would take a look around the road in the
vicinity of the gate, for he suspected that Morgan's submissive going
masked some iniquitous intent. Joe pulled on his boots, sitting in the
kitchen door, listening a moment before he closed it after him, and
walked softly toward the road.
A careful survey as far as he could see in the bright moonlight,
satisfied him that Morgan had not left his horse and buggy around there
anywhere. He might come later. Joe decided to wait around there and
see.
It was a cool autumn night; a prowling wind moved silently. Over
hedgerow and barn roof the moonlight lay in white radiance; the dusty
highway beyond the gate was changed by it into a royal road. Joe felt
that there were memories abroad as he rested his arms on the gate-post.
Moonlight and a soft wind always moved him with a feeling of indefinite
and shapeless tenderness, as elusive as the echo of a song. There was a
soothing quality in the night for him, which laved his bruised
sensibilities like balm. He expanded under its influence; the tumult of
his breast began to subside.
The revelations of that day had fallen rudely upon the youth's
delicately tuned and finely adjusted nature. He had recoiled in horror
from the sacrilege which that house had suffered. In a measure he felt
that he was guilty along with Ollie in her unspeakable sin, in that he
had been so stupid as to permit it.
But, he reflected as he waited there with his hand upon the weathered
gate, great and terrible as the upheaval of his day-world had been, the
night had descended unconscious of it. The moonlight had brightened
untroubled by it; the wind had come from its wooded places unhurried for
it, and unvexed. After all, it had been only an unheard discord in the
eternal, vast harmony. The things of men were matters of infinitesimal
consequence in nature. The passing of a nation of men would not disturb
its tranquillity as much as the falling of a leaf.
It was then long past the hour when he was habitually asleep, and his
vigil weighed on him heavily. No one had passed along the road; Morgan
had not come in sight. Joe was weary from his day's internal conflict
and external toil. He began to consider the advisability of returning to
bed.
Perhaps, thought he, his watch was both futile and unjust. Ollie did not
intend to keep her part in the agreement. She must be burning with
remorse for her transgression.
He turned and walked slowly toward the house, stopping a little way
along to look back and make sure that Morgan had not appeared. Thus he
stood a little while, and then resumed his way.
The house was before him, shadows in the sharp angles of its roof, its
windows catching the moonlight like wakeful eyes. There was a calm over
it, and a somnolent peace. It seemed impossible that iniquitous desires
could live and grow on a night like that. Ollie must be asleep, said he,
and repentant in her dreams.
Joe felt that he might go to his rest with honesty. It would be welcome,
as the desire of tired youth for its bed is strong. At the well he
stopped again to look back for Morgan.
As he turned a light flashed in the kitchen, gleamed a moment, went out
suddenly. It was as if a match had been struck to look for something
quickly found, and then blown out with a puff of breath.
At once the fabric of his hopes collapsed, and his honest attempts to
lift Ollie back to her smirched pedestal and invest her with at least a
part of her former purity of heart, came to a painful end. She was
preparing to leave. The hour when he must speak had come.
He approached the door noiselessly. It was closed, as he had left it,
and within everything was still. As he stood hesitating before it, his
hand lifted to lay upon the latch, his heart laboring in painful lunges
against his ribs, it opened without a sound, and Ollie stood before him
against the background of dark.
The moonlight came down on him through the half-bare arbor, and fell in
mottled patches around him where he stood, his hand still lifted, as if
to help her on her way. Ollie caught her breath in a frightened start,
and shrank back.
"You don't need to be afraid, Ollie--it's Joe," said he.
"Oh, you scared me so!" she panted.
Each then waited as if for the other to speak, and the silence seemed
long.
"Were you going out somewhere?" asked Joe.
"No; I forgot to put away a few things, and I came down," said she. "I
woke up out of my sleep thinking of them," she added.
"Well!" said he, wonderingly. "Can I help you any, Ollie?"
"No; it's only some milk and things," she told him. "You know how Isom
takes on if he finds anything undone. I was afraid he might come in
tonight and see them."
"Well!" said Joe again, in a queer, strained way.
He was standing in the door, blocking it with his body, clenching the
jamb with his hands on either side, as if to bar any attempt that she
might make to pass.
"Will you strike a light, Ollie? I want to have a talk with you," said
he gravely.
"Oh, Joe!" she protested, as if pleasantly scandalized by the request,
intentionally misreading it.
"Have you got another match in your hand? Light the lamp."
"Oh, what's the use?" said she. "I only ran down for a minute. We don't
need the light, do we, Joe? Can't you talk without it?"
"No; I want you to light the lamp," he insisted.
"I'll not do it!" she flared suddenly, turning as if to go to her room.
"You've not got any right to boss me around in my own house!"
"I don't suppose I have, Ollie, and I didn't mean to," said he, stepping
into the room.
Ollie retreated a few steps toward the inner door, and stopped. Joe
could hear her excited breathing as he flung his hat on the table.
"Ollie, what I've got to say to you has to be said sooner or later
tonight, and you'd just as well hear it now," said Joe, trying to assure
her of his friendly intent by speaking softly, although his voice was
tremulous. "Morgan's gone; he'll not be back--at least not tonight."
"Morgan?" said she. "What do you mean--what do I care where he's gone?"
Joe made no reply. He fumbled for the box behind the stove and scraped a
slow sulphur match against the pipe. Its light discovered Ollie
shrinking against the wall where she had stopped, near the door.
She was wearing a straw hat, which must have been a part of her bridal
gear. A long white veil, which she wore scarf-wise over the front
display of its flowers and fruits, came down and crossed behind her
neck. Its ends dangled upon her breast. The dress was one that Joe never
had seen her wear before, a girlish white thing with narrow ruffles. He
wondered as he looked at her with a great ache in his heart, how so much
seeming purity could be so base and foul. In that bitter moment he
cursed old Isom in his heart for goading her to this desperate bound.
She had been starving for a man's love, and for the lack of it she had
thrown herself away on a dog.
Joe fitted the chimney on the burner of the lamp, and stood in judicial
seriousness before her, the stub of the burning match wasting in a
little blaze between his fingers.
"Morgan's gone," he repeated, "and he'll never come back. I know all
about you two, and what you'd planned to do."
Joe dropped the stub of the match and set his foot on it.
Ollie stared at him, her face as white as her bridal dress, her eyes
big, like a barn-yard animal's eyes in a lantern's light. She was
gathering and wadding the ends of her veil in her hands; her lips were
open, showing the points of her small, white teeth.
"Isom--he'll kill me!" she whispered.
"Isom don't know about it," said Joe.
"You'll tell him!"
"No."
Relief flickered in her face. She leaned forward a little, eagerly, as
if to speak, but said nothing. Joe shrank back from her, his hand
pressing heavily upon the table.
"I never meant to tell him," said he slowly.
She sprang toward him, her hands clasped appealingly.
"Then you'll let me go, you'll let me go?" she cried eagerly. "I can't
stay here," she hurried on, "you know I can't stay here, Joe, and suffer
like he's made me suffer the past year! You say Morgan won't come----"
"The coward, to try to steal a man's wife, and deceive you that way,
too!" said Joe, his anger rising.
"Oh, you don't know him as well as I do!" she defended, shaking her head
solemnly. "He's so grand, and good, and I love him, Joe--oh, Joe, I love
him!"
"It's wrong for you to say that!" Joe harshly reproved her. "I don't
want to hear you say that; you're Isom's wife."
"Yes, God help me," said she.
"You could be worse off than you are, Ollie; as it is you've got a
_name_!"
"What's a name when you despise it?" said she bitterly.
"Have you thought what people would say about you if you went away with
Morgan, Ollie?" inquired Joe gently.
"I don't care. We intend to go to some place where we're not known,
and----"
"Hide," said Joe. "Hide like thieves. And that's what you'd be, both of
you, don't you see? You'd never be comfortable and happy, Ollie,
skulking around that way."
"Yes, I would be happy," she maintained sharply. "Mr. Morgan is a
gentleman, and he's good. He'd be proud of me, he'd take care of me like
a lady."
"For a little while maybe, till he found somebody else that he thought
more of," said Joe. "When it comes so easy to take one man's wife, he
wouldn't stop at going off with another."
"It's a lie--you know it's a lie! Curtis Morgan's a gentleman, I tell
you, and I'll not hear you run him down!"
"Gentlemen and ladies don't have to hide," said Joe.
"You're lying to me!" she charged him suddenly, her face coloring
angrily. "He wouldn't go away from here on the say-so of a kid like you.
He's down there waiting for me, and I'm going to him."
"I wouldn't deceive you, Ollie," said he, leaving his post near the
door, opening a way for her to pass. "If you think he's there, go and
see. But I tell you he's gone. He asked me to shut my eyes to this thing
and let you and him carry it out; but I couldn't do that, so he went
away."
She knew he was not deceiving her, and she turned on him with
reproaches.
"You want to chain me here and see me work myself to death for that old
miserly Isom!" she stormed. "You're just as bad as he is; you ain't got
a soft spot in your heart."
"Yes, I'd rather see you stay here with Isom and do a nigger woman's
work, like you have been doing ever since you married him, than let you
go away with Morgan for one mistaken day. What you'd have to face with
him would kill you quicker than work, and you'd suffer a thousand times
more sorrow."
"What do you know about it?" she sneered. "You never loved anybody.
That's the way with you religious fools--you don't get any fun out of
life yourselves, and you want to spoil everybody else's. Well, you'll
not spoil mine, I tell you. I'll go to Morgan this very night, and you
can't stop me!"
"Well, we'll see about that, Ollie," he told her, showing a little
temper. "I told him that I'd keep you here if I had to tie you, and I'll
do that, too, if I have to. Isom----"
"Isom, Isom!" she mocked. "Well, tell Isom you spied on me and tell the
old fool what you saw--tell him, tell him! Tell him all you know, and
tell him more! Tell the old devil I hate him, and always did hate him;
tell him I've got out of bed in the middle of the night more than once
to get the ax and kill him in his sleep! Tell him I wish he was dead and
in hell, where he belongs, and I'm sorry I didn't send him there! What
do I care about Isom, or you, or anybody else, you spy, you sneaking
spy!"
"I'll go with you to the road if you want to see if he's there," Joe
offered.
Ollie's fall from the sanctified place of irreproachable womanhood had
divested her of all awe in his eyes. He spoke to her now as he would
have reasoned with a child.
"No, I suppose you threatened to go after Isom, or something like that,
and he went away," said she. "You couldn't scare him, he wouldn't run
from you. Tomorrow he'll send me word, and I'll go to him in spite of
you and Isom and everything else. I don't care--I don't care--you're
mean to me, too! you're as mean as you can be!"
She made a quick tempestuous turn from anger to tears, lifting her arm
to her face and hiding her eyes in the bend of her elbow. Her shoulders
heaved; she sobbed in childlike pity for herself and the injury which
she seemed to think she bore.
Joe put his hand on her shoulder.
"Don't take on that way about it, Ollie," said he.
"Oh, oh!" she moaned, her hands pressed to her face now; "why couldn't
you have been kind to me; why couldn't you have said a good word to me
sometimes? I didn't have a friend in the world, and I was so lonesome
and tired and--and--and--everything!"
Her reproachful appeal was disconcerting to Joe. How could he tell her
that he had not understood her striving and yearning to reach him, and
that at last understanding, he had been appalled by the enormity of his
own heart's desire. He said nothing for a little while, but took her by
one tear-wet hand and led her away from the door. Near the table he
stopped, still holding her hand, stroking it tenderly with comforting
touch.
"Never mind, Ollie," said he at last; "you go to bed now and don't think
any more about going away with Morgan. If I thought it was best for your
peace and happiness for you to go, I'd step out of the way at once. But
he'd drag you down, Ollie, lower than any woman you ever saw, for they
don't have that kind of women here. Morgan isn't as good a man as Isom
is, with all his hard ways and stinginess. If he's honest and honorable,
he can wait for you till Isom dies. He'll not last more than ten or
fifteen years longer, and you'll be young even then, Ollie. I don't
suppose anybody ever gets too old to be happy any more than they get too
old to be sad."
"No, I don't suppose they do, Joe," she sighed.
She had calmed down while he talked. Now she wiped her eyes on her veil,
while the last convulsions of sobbing shook her now and then, like the
withdrawing rumble of thunder after a storm.
"I'll put out the light, Ollie," said he. "You go on to bed."
"Oh, Joe, Joe!" said she in a little pleading, meaningless way; a little
way of reproach and softness.
She lifted her tear-bright eyes, with the reflection of her subsiding
passion in them, and looked yearningly into his. Ollie suddenly found
herself feeling small and young, penitent and frail, in the presence of
this quickly developed man. His strength seemed to rise above her, and
spread round her, and warm her in its protecting folds. There was
comfort in him, and promise.
The wife of the dead viking could turn to the living victor with a
smile. It is a comforting faculty that has come down from the first
mother to the last daughter; it is as ineradicable in the sex as the
instinct which cherishes fire. Ollie was primitive in her passions and
pains. If she could not have Morgan, perhaps she could yet find a
comforter in Joe. She put her free hand on his shoulder and looked up
into his face again. Tears were on her lashes, her lips were loose and
trembling.
"If you'd be good to me, Joe; if you'd only be good and kind, I could
stay," she said.
Joe was moved to tenderness by her ingenuous sounding plea. He put his
hand on her shoulder in a comforting way. She was very near him then,
and her small hand, so lately cold and tear-damp, was warm within his.
She threw her head back in expectant attitude; her yearning eyes seemed
to be dragging him to her lips.
"I will be good to you, Ollie; just as good and kind as I know how to
be," he promised.
She swayed a little nearer; her warm, soft body pressed against him, her
bright young eyes still striving to draw him down to her lips.
"Oh, Joe, Joe," she murmured in a snuggling, contented way.
Sweat sprang upon his forehead and his throbbing temples, so calm and
cool but a moment before. He stood trembling, his damp elf-locks
dangling over his brow. Through the half-open door a little breath of
wind threaded in and made the lamp-blaze jump; it rustled outside
through the lilac-bushes like the passing of a lady's gown.
Joe's voice was husky in his throat when he spoke.
"You'd better go to bed, Ollie," said he.
He still clung foolishly to her willing hand as he led her to the door
opening to the stairs.
"No, you go on up first, Joe," she said. "I want to put the wood in the
stove ready to light in the morning, and set a few little things out.
It'll give me a minute longer to sleep. You can trust me now, Joe," she
protested, looking earnestly into his eyes, "for I'm not going away with
Morgan now."
"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ollie," he told her, unfeigned pleasure
in his voice.
"I want you to promise me you'll never tell Isom," said she.
"I never intended to tell him," he replied.
She withdrew her hand from his quickly, and quickly both of them fled to
his shoulders.
"Stoop down," she coaxed with a seductive, tender pressure of her hands,
"and tell me, Joe."
Isom's step fell on the porch. He crashed the door back against the wall
as he came in, and Joe and Ollie fell apart in guilty haste. Isom stood
for a moment on the threshold, amazement in his staring eyes and open
mouth. Then a cloud of rage swept him, he lifted his huge, hairy fist
above his head like a club.
"I'll kill you!" he threatened, covering the space between him and Joe
in two long strides.
Ollie shrank away, half stooping, from the expected blow, her hands
raised in appealing defense. Joe put up his open hand as if to check
Isom in his assault.
"Hold on, Isom; don't you hit me," he said.
Whatever Isom's intention had been, he contained himself. He stopped,
facing Joe, who did not yield an inch.
"Hit you, you whelp!" said Isom, his lips flattened back from his teeth.
"I'll do more than hit you. You--" He turned on Ollie: "I saw you.
You've disgraced me! I'll break every bone in your body! I'll throw you
to the hogs!"
"If you'll hold on a minute and listen to reason, Isom, you'll find
there's nothing at all like you think there is," said Joe. "You're
making a mistake that you may be sorry for."
"Mistake!" repeated Isom bitterly, as if his quick-rising rage had sunk
again and left him suddenly weak. "Yes, the mistake I made was when
I took you in to save you from the poorhouse and give you a home. I
go away for a day and come back to find you two clamped in each
other's arms so close together I couldn't shove a hand between you.
Mistake----"
"That's not so, Isom," Joe protested indignantly.
"Heaven and hell, didn't I see you!" roared Isom. "There's law for you
two if I want to take it on you, but what's the punishment of the law
for what you've done on me? Law! No, by God! I'll make my own law for
this case. I'll kill both of you if I'm spared to draw breath five
minutes more!"
Isom lifted his long arm in witness of his terrible intention, and cast
his glaring eyes about the room as if in search of a weapon to begin his
work.
"I tell you, Isom, nothing wrong ever passed between me and your wife,"
insisted Joe earnestly. "You're making a terrible mistake."
Ollie, shrinking against the wall, looked imploringly at Joe. He had
promised never to tell Isom what he knew, but how was he to save himself
now without betraying her? Was he man enough to face it out and bear the
strain, rush upon old Isom and stop him in his mad intention, or would
he weaken and tell all he knew, here at the very first test of his
strength? She could not read his intention in his face, but his eyes
were frowning under his gathered brows as he watched every move that old
Isom made. He was leaning forward a little, his arms were raised, like a
wrestler waiting for the clinch.
Isom's face was as gray as ashes that have lain through many a rain. He
stood where he had stopped at Joe's warning, and now was pulling up his
sleeves as if to begin his bloody work.
"You two conspired against me from the first," he charged, his voice
trembling; "you conspired to eat me holler, and now you conspire to
bring shame and disgrace to my gray hairs. I trust you and depend on
you, and I come home----"
Isom's arraignment broke off suddenly.
He stood with arrested jaw, gazing intently at the table. Joe followed
his eyes, but saw nothing on the table to hold a man's words and
passions suspended in that strange manner. Nothing was there but the
lamp and Joe's old brown hat. That lay there, its innocent, battered
crown presenting to Joe's eyes, its broad and pliant brim tilted up on
the farther side as if resting on a fold of itself.
It came to Joe in an instant that Isom's anger had brought paralysis
upon him. He started forward to assist him, Isom's name on his lips,
when Isom leaped to the table with a smothered cry in his throat. He
seemed to hover over the table a moment, leaning with his breast upon
it, gathering some object to him and hugging it under his arm.
"Great God!" panted Isom in shocked voice, standing straight between
them, his left arm pressed to his breast as if it covered a mortal
wound. He twisted his neck and glared at Joe, but he did not disclose
the thing that he had gathered from the table.
"Great God!" said he again, in the same shocked, panting voice.
"Isom," began Joe, advancing toward him.
Isom retreated quickly. He ran to the other end of the table where he
stood, bending forward, hugging his secret to his breast as if he meant
to defend it with the blood of his heart. He stretched out his free hand
to keep Joe away.
"Stand off! Stand off!" he warned.
Again Isom swept his wild glance around the room. Near the door, on two
prongs of wood nailed to the wall, hung the gun of which Joe had spoken
to Morgan in his warning. It was a Kentucky rifle, long barreled, heavy,
of two generations past. Isom used it for hawks, and it hung there
loaded and capped from year's beginning to year's end. Isom seemed to
realize when he saw it, for the first time in that season of insane
rage, that it offered to his hand a weapon. He leaped toward it,
reaching up his hand.
"_I'll kill you now!_" said he.
In one long spring Isom crossed from where he stood and seized the rifle
by the muzzle.
"Stop him, stop him!" screamed Ollie, pressing her hands to her ears.
"Isom, Isom!" warned Joe, leaping after him.
Isom was wrenching at the gun to free the breech from the fork when Joe
caught him by the shoulder and tried to drag him back.
"Look out--the hammer!" he cried.
But quicker than the strength of Joe's young arm, quicker than old
Isom's wrath, was the fire in that corroded cap; quicker than the old
man's hand, the powder in the nipple of the ancient gun.
Isom fell at the report, his left hand still clutching the secret thing
to his bosom, his right clinging to the rifle-barrel. He lay on his back
where he had crashed down, as straight as if stretched to a line. His
staring eyes rolled, all white; his mouth stood open, as if in an
unuttered cry.