TO Cynthia the day on which she expected Floyd to return from Atlanta
passed slowly. Something told her that he would come straight to her
from the station, on his arrival, and she was impatient to hear his
news. The hack usually brought passengers over at six o'clock, and at
that time she was on the porch looking expectantly down the road leading
to the village. But he did not come. Seven o'clock struck--eight; supper
was over and her parents and her grandmother were in bed.
“I simply will not go to meet him in the grape-arbor any more,” she said
to herself. “He is waiting to come later, but I'll not go out, as much
as I'd like to hear about his mother. He thinks my curiosity will drive
me to it, but he shall see.” However, when alone in her room she paced
the floor in an agony of indecision and beset by strange, unaccountable
forebodings. Might not something have happened to him? At nine o'clock
she was in bed, but not asleep. At half-past nine she got up. The big
bed of feathers seemed a great, smothering instrument of torture; she
could scarcely get her breath. Throwing a shawl over her, she went out
on the porch and sat down in a chair.
She had been there only a moment when she heard her mother's step in the
hall, and, turning her head, she saw the gaunt old woman's form in the
doorway.
“I heard you walking about,” Mrs. Porter said, coldly, “and got up to
see what was the matter. Are you sick?”
“No, mother, I simply am not sleepy, that's all.” The old woman advanced
a step nearer, her sharp eyes on the girl's white night-gown and bare
feet. “Good gracious!” she cried. “You'll catch your death of cold. Go
in the house this minute. I'll bet I know why you can't sleep. You
are worried about what people are saying about Nelson Floyd's marrying
Evelyn Duncan and throwing you over, as he no doubt has many other
girls.”
“I wasn't thinking of it, mother.” Cynthia rose and started in. “He can
marry her if he wants to.”
“Oh, well, you can pretend all you like. I reckon your pride would make
you defend yourself. Now, go in the house.”
In the darkness of her room Cynthia sat on the side of her bed. She
heard her mother's bare feet as the old woman went along the hall back
to her room in the rear. Floyd might be in the grape-arbor now. As her
light was extinguished, he would think she had gone to bed, and he would
not whistle. Then a great, chilling doubt struck her. Perhaps he had
really gone to Duncan's to see Evelyn. But no, a warm glow stole over
her as she remembered that he had declined to go home from church in the
captain's carriage that he might walk with her. No, it was not that; but
perhaps some accident had happened to him--the stage-horses might have
become frightened on that dangerous mountain road. The driver was often
intoxicated, and in that condition was known to be reckless. Cynthia
threw herself back in bed and pulled the light covering over her, but
she did not go to sleep till far towards morning.
The sun was up when she awoke. Her mother was standing near her, a
half-repentant look flitting over her wrinkled face.
“Don't get up unless you feel like it,” she said. “I've done your work
and am keeping your coffee and breakfast warm.”
“Thank you, mother.” Cynthia sat up, her mind battling with both dreams
and realities.
“You don't look like you are well,” Mrs. Porter said. “I watched you
before you waked up. You are awfully dark under the eyes.”
“I'll feel all right when I am up and stirring around,” Cynthia said,
avoiding her mother's close scrutiny. “I tell you I'm not sick.”
When she had dressed herself and gone out into the dining-room she found
a delicious breakfast waiting for her, but she scarcely touched the
food. The coffee she drank for its stimulating effect, and felt better.
All that morning, however, she was the helpless victim of recurring
forebodings. When her father came in from the village at noon she hung
about him, hoping that he would drop some observation from which she
might learn if Floyd had returned, but the quaint old gossip seemed to
talk of everything except the subject to which her soul seemed bound.
About the middle of the afternoon Mrs. Porter said she wanted a spool of
cotton thread, and Cynthia offered to go to the village for it.
“Not in this hot sun,” the old woman objected.
“I could keep in the shade all the way,” Cynthia told her.
“Well, if you'll do that, you may go,” Mrs. Porter gave in. “I don't
know but what the exercise will do you good. I tell you, I don't like
the looks of your skin and eyes. I'm afraid you are going to take down
sick. You didn't touch breakfast and ate very little dinner.”
Cynthia managed to laugh reassuringly as she went for her hat and
sunshade. Indeed, the prospect even of activity had driven touches of
color into her cheeks and her step was light and alert as she started
off--so at least thought Mrs. Porter, who was looking after her from a
window. But what did the trip amount to? At Mayhew & Floyd's store Joe
Peters waited on her and had nothing to say of Floyd. While the clerk's
back was turned Cynthia threw a guarded glance in the direction of
Floyd's desk, but the shadows of the afternoon had enveloped that part
of the room in obscurity, and she saw nothing that would even indirectly
reply to her heart's question. It was on her tongue to inquire if Floyd
had returned, but her pride laid a firm hand over her pretty mouth, and
with her small purchase tightly clasped in her tense fingers, she went
out into the street and turned her face homeward.
The next day passed in much the same way, and the night. Then two other
days and nights of racking torture came and went. The very lack of
interest in the subject, of those about her, was maddening. She was
sure now that something vital had happened to her lover, and Saturday
at noon, when her father came from the village, she saw that he was the
bearer of news. She knew, too, that it concerned Floyd before the old
man had opened his lips.
“Well, what you reckon has happened?” Nathan asked, with one of his
unctuous smiles. “You two women could guess, an' guess, fer two thousand
years, an' then never git in a mile o' what everybody in town is talkin'
about.”
Cynthia's heart sank like a plummet. It was coming--the grim, horrible
revelation she had feared. But her father was subtly enjoying the blank
stare in her eyes, the depth of which was beyond his comprehension. As
usual, he purposely hung fire.
“What is it, Nathan?” his wife said, entreatingly. “Don't keep us
waiting as you always do.” She looked at Cynthia and remarked: “It's
something out of the common. I can see that from the way he begins.”
Porter laughed dryly. “You kin bet yore sweet lives it's out o' the
common, but I hain't no hand to talk when my throat's parched dry
with thirst. I cayn't drink that town water, nohow. Has any fresh been
fetched?”
“Just this minute,” declared his wife, and she hastened to the
water-shelf in the entry, returning with a dripping gourd. “Here, drink
it! You won't say a word till you are ready.”
Porter drank slowly. “You may _call_ that fresh water,” he sneered, “but
you wouldn't ef you had it to swallow. I reckon you'd call old stump
water fresh ef you could git news any the quicker by it. Well, it's
about Nelson Floyd.”
“Nelson Floyd!” gasped Mrs. Porter. “He's gone and married Evelyn
Duncan--that's my guess.”
“No, it ain't that,” declared Porter. “An' it ain't another Wade gal
scrape that anybody knows of. The fact is nobody don't know _what_ it
is. Floyd went down to Atlanta Wednesday, so Mayhew says, to lay in a
few articles o' stock that was out, an' to call on that new uncle o'
his. He was to be back Wednesday night, without fail, to draw up some
important mortgages fer the firm, an' a dozen customers has been helt
over in town fer two days. They all had to go back without transactin'
business, fer Floyd didn't turn up. Nor he didn't write a line, nuther.
And, although old Mayhew has been firin' telegrams down thar, fust to
Nelson an' later to business houses, not a thing has been heard o' the
young man since last Wednesday. He hain't registered at no hotel in
Atlanta. One man has been found that said he knowed Floyd by sight,
an' that he had seed 'im walkin' about at night in the vilest street in
Atlanta lookin' like a dead man or one plumb bereft of his senses.”
Cynthia stood staring at her father with expanded eyes, and then she sat
down near a window, her face averted from the others. She said nothing.
“He's crazy,” said Mrs. Porter. “I've always thought something was wrong
with that man. His whole life shows it. He was an outlaw when he was a
child, and when he grew up he put on high' an' mighty airs, an' started
to drinkin' like a lord. He'd no sooner let up on that than he got into
that Wade trouble, an'--”
“Some think he was drugged, an' maybe put out of the way on the sly,”
said Porter, bluntly. “But I don't know. Thoughts is cheap.”
“Hush, Nathan!” Mrs. Porter said, under her breath, for Cynthia had
risen, and without looking to the right or left was moving from the
room. “This may kill that poor child.”
“Kill her, a dog's hind foot!” Porter sneered. “To be a woman yorse'f,
you are the porest judge of 'em I ever seed. You women are so dead
anxious to have some man die fer you that you think the same reckless
streak runs in yore own veins. You all said Minnie Wade had tuck
powdered glass when she was sick that time an' was goin' to pass in 'er
checks on this feller's account, but she didn't die fer him, nor fer
Thad Pelham, nor the two Thomas boys, nor Abe Spring, nor none o' the
rest.”
“You ought to be ashamed of speaking of your own child in the same
breath with that girl,” said Mrs. Porter, insincerely, her eyes
anxiously on the door through which Cynthia had gone.
“I hain't bunchin' 'em together at all,” Porter declared. “I was only
tryin' to keep you from layin' in a burial outfit that may go out o'
fashion 'fore Cynthy wants to use it. You watch 'er an' you'll see 'er
pick up' in a day or so. I've seed widows wear black so heavy that the
dye in the goods seemed to soak into the'r skins an' drip of'n the'r
eyelashes, an' them same women was wearin' red stockin's an' flirtin' em
at another fool inside of a month.”
“You don't know what you are talking about,” responded Mrs. Porter.
“It is going hard with her, but I really hope Floyd'll not come back to
Spring-town. I don't feel safe with him around.”
“You don't want 'im here,” sneered Porter, “but yo're dead sure his
absence is a-goin' to lay our only child under the sod. That's about
as sensible as the stand a woman takes on most questions. As fer me, I
confess I'm sorter upset. I'd about made up my mind that our little gal
was goin' to yank that chap an' his boodle into this family before long,
but it looks like I was off in my calculations. To look at her now, a
body wouldn't think she was holdin' the drivin'-reins very tight. But
come what may, storm, hail, wind, rain, or sunshine an' fine crops, I'll
be the only one, I reckon, in this house that will sleep sound to-night.
An' that's whar you are all a set o' fools. A person that loses sleep
wonderin' whether another person is dead or alive mought be in better
business, in this day and time, when just _anybody_ is liable to drap
dead in the'r tracks. La, me! What you got fer dinner? I smell some'n'
a-cookin'.”
And Porter went into the kitchen, got down on his knees at the stove,
and looked into it.
“That's all right,” he said to himself, with a chuckle, “but she hain't
put half enough gravy on it, an' ef I hadn't a-been here to 'a' turned
it, it 'ud not 'a' got cooked clean through. If it's tough I'll raise a
row. I told 'em to sell the tough 'uns. What's the use o' raisin' hens
ef you have to eat the scrubs an' don't git half-pay fer the ones you
send to market?”