MRS. PORTER drove down the village street between the rows of scattered
houses till she arrived at a modest cottage with a white paling fence
in front and a few stunted flowers. Here she alighted. There was a
hitching-post, with an old horseshoe nailed near the top for a hook,
and, throwing the reins over it, she went into the yard. Some one came
to a window and parted the curtains. It was Hillhouse. He turned and
stepped quickly to the door, a startled expression of inquiry on his
face.
“Come in, come in,” he said. “Really, I wasn't looking for anybody to
drop in so early in the day; and this is the first time you've ever
called, Sister Porter.”
With a cold nod she walked past him into the little white-walled,
carpetless hall.
“You've got a parlor, haven't you?” she asked, cautiously looking
around.
“Oh yes; excuse me,” he stammered, and he awkwardly opened a door on the
right. “Walk in, walk in. I'm awfully rattled this morning. Seeing you
so sudden made me--”
“I hope the Marshall family across the street weren't watching as I got
out,” she broke in, as she preceded him into the parlor. “People talk so
much here, and I wanted to see you privately. Let a woman with a grown
daughter go to an unmarried preacher's house and you never hear the last
of it.”
She sat down in a rocking-chair and looked about her, he thought, with
an expression of subdued excitement. The room was most simply furnished.
On the floor lay a rag carpet, with rugs of the same material. A cottage
organ stood in one corner, and a round, marble-topped table in the
centre of the room held a lamp and a plush-covered album. On the white
walls hung family portraits, black-and-white enlarged photographs. The
window looking towards the street had a green shade and white, stiffly
starched lace curtains..
“Your mother and sister--are they in the house?” Mrs. Porter asked.
“No,” he answered, standing in front of her. “They went over to McGill's
as soon as breakfast was finished. You know their little boy got kicked
by a mule yesterday.”
“Yes, I heard so, and I'm glad they are not here--though you'd better
tell them I came. If you don't, and the Marshalls happen to mention it
to them, they might think it strange.”
“You wanted to see me alone, then?” Hillhouse put out his stiff,
tentative hand and drew a chair to him and sat down in it.
“Yes, I'm in trouble--great, great trouble,” the old woman said, her
steely glance on his face; “and to tell you the truth, I don't see how
I'm going to get around it. I couldn't mention it to any one else but
you, not even Nathan nor mother. In fact, you ought to know, for it's
bound to worry you, too.”
“Oh, Sister Porter, what is it? Don't keep me waiting. I knew you were
in some trouble when I saw your face as you came in at the gate. Is it
about--”
“Of course it's about Cynthia,” sighed the woman--“about her and Nelson
Floyd.”
“He's dead, and she--” Hillhouse began, but Mrs. Porter stopped him.
“No, that isn't it,” she went on. “He's alive. He's back here.”
“Oh, is that so?” Hillhouse leaned forward, his face white, his thin
lips quivering.
“Yes, I'll tell you about it,” went on Mrs. Porter. “Of late I've been
unable to sleep for thinking of Cynthia and her actions, she's seemed
so reckless and despondent, and last night I left my bed and started to
creep in and see if she was asleep. I had on soft slippers and made no
noise, and had just got to the end of the hall, when her door opened and
she went out at the front.”
“Gone? Oh, don't--don't tell me that, Mrs. Porter!”
“No, not that, quite; but wait till I am through,” Mrs. Porter said,
her tone hard and crisp. “When I got to the porch I saw her just
disappearing in the orchard. And then I heard somebody whistling like a
whippoorwill. It was Nelson Floyd. He was standing at the grape-arbor,
and the two met there. They went inside and sat down, and then, as
there was a thick row of rose-bushes between the house and the arbor, I
slipped up behind it. I crouched down low till I was almost flat on the
ground. I heard every word that passed between them.”
Hillhouse said nothing. The veins in his forehead stood out full and
dark. Drops of perspiration, the dew of mental agony, appeared on his
cheeks.
“Don't form hasty judgment,” Mrs. Porter said. “If I ever doubted, or
feared my child's weakness on that man's account, I don't now. She's
as good and pure as the day she was born. In fact, I don't believe she
would have gone out to meet him that way if she hadn't been nearly crazy
over the uncertainty as to what had happened to him. I don't blame her;
I'd have done it myself if I'd cared as much for a man as she does about
him--or thinks she does.”
“You say you heard what passed?” Hillhouse panted.
“Yes, and never since I was born have I heard such stuff as he poured
into that poor child's ears. As I listened to his talk, one instant my
heart would bleed with sympathy and the next I'd want to grab him by the
throat and strangle him. He was all hell and all heaven's angels bound
up in one human shape to entrap one frail human being. He went over all
his suffering from babyhood up, saying he had had as much put on him as
he could stand. He had come back by stealth and didn't want a soul but
her to know he was here; he didn't intend ever to face the sneers of
these folks and let them throw up his mother's sin to him. He'd been
on a long and terrible debauch, but had sobered up and promised to stay
that way if she would run away with him to some far-off place where no
soul would ever know his history. He had no end of funds, he said; he'd
made money on investments outside of Springtown, and he promised to
gratify every wish of hers. She was to have the finest and best in the
land, and get away from a miserable existence under my roof. Oh, I hate
him--poisoning her mind against the mother who nursed her!”
“He wanted her to elope!” gasped Hillhouse--“to elope with a man just
off of a long drunk and with a record like that behind him--_her_, that
beautiful, patient child! But what did she say?”
“At first she refused to go, as well as I could make out, and then she
told him she would have to think over it. He is to meet her at the same
place next Friday night, and if she decides to go between now and then
she will be ready.”
“Thank God, we've discovered it ahead of time!” Hillhouse said,
fervently, and he got up, and, with his head hanging low and his bony
hands clutched behind him over the tails of his long, black coat, he
walked back and forth from the window to the door. “I tell you, Sister
Porter,” he almost sobbed, “I can't give her up to him. I can't, I tell
you. It isn't in me. I'd die rather than have her go off with him.”
“So would I--so would I, fearin' what I _now_ do,” Mrs. Porter said,
without looking at him.
“_Fearing what you now do?_” Hillhouse paused in front of her.
“That's what I said.” The old woman raised her eyes to his. Hillhouse
sank down into his chair, nursing a new-born alarm in his lap.
“What do you mean, Sister Porter?” he asked, in a low tone.
“Why, I mean that I never heard any thoroughly rational man on earth
talk just as Floyd did last night. I may be away off. I may be wronging
him badly, but not once in all his tirade did he say _right in so many
words_ that he meant actually to marry her.”
“Great God, the damnable wretch!” Hillhouse sprang again to his feet.
Mrs. Porter put out her hand and caught his arm and drew him down to his
chair again.
“Don't decide hastily,” she urged him. “I laid awake all night trying
to get it clear in my head. He had lots to say about the awful way the
world had treated him, and that he felt, having no name, that he was
unworthy of anybody as sweet and good as she was, but that if she would
go off with him he'd feel that she had sacrificed everything for him and
that that would recompense him for all he had lost. He even said that
Providence sometimes worked that way, giving people a lot to bear at
first, and then lifting them out of it all of a sudden.”
Hillhouse leaned forward till his elbows rested on his knees and he
covered his ghastly face with his hands. For a moment he was silent.
Mrs. Porter could hear him breathing heavily. Suddenly he looked at her
from eyes that were almost bloodshot.
“_I_ understand him,” he declared. “He fell into a drunkard's hell,
feeling that he was justified in such a course by his ill-luck, and
now he has deliberately persuaded himself that both he and she would be
justified in defying social customs--being a law unto themselves as it
were. It is just the sort of thing a man of his erratic character would
think of, and the damnable temptation is so dazzling that he is trying
to make himself believe they have a right to it.”
“Really, that was what I was afraid of,” said Mrs. Porter, with a soft
groan. “I heard him tell her that he would never be called by the name
of Floyd again. Surely, a man has to have a name of some sort to get
legally married, doesn't he?”
“Of course he has,” said Hillhouse. “But, my God, Sister Porter, what
are you going to do?”
“That's the trouble,” answered the old woman. “I understand Cynthia well
enough to know that she will not be coerced in the matter. She is going
to think it all over, and if she decides to go with him no power on
earth will stop her. She looks already better satisfied. The only thing
I can see is for me to try to stir up her sympathies in some way. She's
tender-hearted; she'd hate to be the cause of my suffering. We must work
together, and in secret, Brother Hillhouse.
“Work together, but how?” the preacher groaned. “I can't think of a
thing to do. If I appealed to her on the score of my love for her she
would only balance that off by his, and all she imagines the scoundrel
suffers.”
“Oh, his trouble is _real_ enough,” Mrs. Porter declared. “I tell you
that in spite of my hatred for him, and even in spite of his cowardly
insinuations against me ringing in my ears last night, I felt sorry for
him. It would pierce a heart of stone to hear him talk as he did to her.
If she resists, she will be a stronger woman than I would have been at
her age and under the same circumstances. Pshaw! what would I have cared
if I'd loved a man with all my heart and fate had deprived him of a name
to give me--what would I have cared for the opinions of a little handful
of people pent up here in the mountains when he was asking me to go with
him out into the wide world and take my chances along with him? I don't
know, Brother Hillhouse, but that I'd have gloried in the opportunity to
say I was no better than he was. That's the way most women would look at
it; that's the way, I'm afraid, _she_ will look at it.”
The preacher turned upon her, cold fury snapping in his eyes and voice.
“You talk that way--_you!_” he snarled--“and you her mother! You are
almost arguing that because _his_ father and mother branded him as
they did that he and Cynthia have a right to--to brand their--their own
helpless offspring the same way. Sin can't be compromised with.”
“Ah, you are right. I wasn't looking far enough ahead,” Mrs. Porter
acknowledged. “No, we must save her. Heaven could not possibly bless
such a step as that. I want her to hear somebody talk on that line. Say,
Brother Hillhouse, if I can get her to come to church to-morrow, could
you not, in a roundabout way, touch on that idea?”
“God knows I am willing to try anything--anything!” the minister said,
despondently. “Yes, bring her, if she will come. She seems to listen to
me. I'll do my best.”
“Well, I'll bring her,” Mrs. Sorter promised. “Good-morning. I'd better
get back. They will wonder what's keeping me.”