This woman, in these surroundings, was an amazing apparition. Against
the background of his old hayrick, still half full of hay, Jeff saw her
outlined. She wore a sailor’s oilskin coat, buttoned about her throat;
and beneath the skirts of the draggled coat he glimpsed slim silk-clad
ankles and badly soiled white satin pumps. She wore no hat; her hair
was wet and all awry; and there was a thin streak of blood from a
scratch upon her temple that had trickled down across the bridge of her
nose in a slanting direction. Yet in spite of these difficulties he
perceived that she was very beautiful.
At sight of her Jeff had stopped in his tracks and still stood
motionless with surprise, the lantern in his lifted hand. The woman’s
white fingers fumbled nervously at the fastenings of the oilskin coat
she wore; she waited for a moment in silence; but when he did not speak
she nodded in an uneasy little way and stammeringly said to him, “Good
evening!” Her voice was full and throaty and pleasantly modulated.
Jeff replied, “Howdo!”
She began to speak very rapidly.
“You’re probably wondering how I came here. I was in your car. On the
floor of the back seat. Almost crushed. That big bag fell off the seat
on top of me when you hit that terrible bump. It banged my head down on
a piece of iron. I’m afraid it has bled a little. I was almost
smothered. The road was so rough.”
She was panting as though she had run a race; and Jeff watched her
steadfastly for a moment, and then, for sheer relief from his
astonishment, gripped the commonplace with both hands.
“You better come in the house and wash up,” he told her slowly, “and get
warm. I guess you’re kind of wet.”
She nodded. “Yes. I’d like that. I’d like to do that.”
He perceived that she was fighting for self-control, putting down the
revolt of jangling nerves.
“Come through here, ma’am,” he bade her, and led the way through the
woodshed and into the kitchen. There he set his lantern on the table and
brought fresh water from the pump. “I’ve been away since morning,” he
explained. “The water in the tank is cold. You want to wait till I heat
some up?”
She shook her head. “This will do finely.”
He went through into the bedroom and returned with a heavy porcelain
bowl, which he set in the sink, removing the granite-ware wash-basin.
The woman had sunk down limply in a chair beside the table. Jeff,
careful not to distress her by his scrutiny, unwrapped a fresh bar of
soap, brought out a clean towel. Then with half a dozen motions he threw
shavings and bits of kindling into the stove, touched a match to them,
laid a stick or two of hardwood atop. “That’ll warm the kitchen up
pretty quick,” he told her. He understood that she wished to be alone,
yet was not sure what he should do. At last he said awkwardly, “I’ll be
doing the chores,” and lighted a lamp for her, then took the lantern and
departed through the shed again.
When he had gone only a few steps he stopped, considered, then returned
and knocked upon the door through which he had come out. She bade him
enter; and when he did so he found her on her feet, unfastening the long
black coat.
“You could go into the bedroom,” he said tentatively.
She shook her head, smiling gratefully. “I’m sure this is fine. But I
would like a comb.”
“I’ll get my wife’s for you,” he replied; and brought it to her. Mrs.
Ranney was a good housekeeper; the comb was as clean as new. “Would
there be anything else?” he asked when she had thanked him for it.
“No. But you’re very kind to me.”
“I’ll get the chores done,” he replied uncomfortably, and this time
departed in good earnest to the barn.
When he had fed and watered the stock, finding a relief in the familiar
routine, he removed his purchases from the car. Saw where the woman had
crouched on the floor. The rubber blanket which he had thrown in at the
wharf must have fallen across her back; the heavy sack of feed might
well have crushed her. “Lucky she wa’n’t worse hurt,” he told himself.
He was full of speculations, full of questions, half dazed with wonder.
Women of such a sort as this were as though they lived in another world.
Yet she was in his kitchen now.
It was necessary for him to go back to the house to get the milking
pails. Again he knocked upon the door, and the woman bade him come in.
She had laid aside the oilskins; he was not able at once to understand
just what it was she wore. A dress, but of a sort unfamiliar to his
eyes. He had seen magazine pictures of such things. An evening gown,
décolletté. Her hair was loose in a warm cloud about her smooth
shoulders, and she was leaning above the stove.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, flushing with some confusion. “I’m trying
to get it dry.”
He would have backed out of the kitchen. “I’m not in a hurry, ma’am.”
But she cried warmly, “No, no, it’s all right. Come in.”
“I come to get the milk pails,” he explained. “I scalded them out this
morning.” He took them from the draining board at one end of the sink.
“I’ll go milk now.”
She asked diffidently, “Can’t I be starting supper while you’re doing
that?”
Jeff smiled faintly. “I’m used to cooking. I know where the things are.”
“I can cook,” she assured him. “What are we going to have for supper?”
She was beginning to see some humor in the situation.
“Why I just figured to scramble some eggs, and make coffee,” Jeff
confessed. “The things are in the pantry, in through the dining room,”
he added.
“I’ll have supper all ready when you come back,” she promised.
He said reluctantly, “Well, all right,” and left her there.
When he returned, half an hour later, he found her, her hair in a loose
braid, wearing one of his wife’s aprons, busy about the kitchen table.
“I’ve everything ready,” she told him, “but I waited, so that things
would be nice and hot.”
“I got to separate the milk first,” he explained.
She nodded and, while he performed that operation, busied herself with
egg beater and mixing bowl. He took the cream down cellar, set the skim
milk in the shed for his hogs. When he had washed his hands and face she
summoned him to supper in the dining room. She had made an omelet and
toast, and her coffee was better than his. He ate with the silent
intentness of a hungry man. Afterward she insisted on washing the
dishes, while he read, fitfully enough, yet with an appearance of
absorption, the paper that had been left that afternoon in the mail box
before the door. There was something grotesquely domestic in the
situation, and Jeff’s pulses were pounding with wonder at it all.
He had asked the woman no single question. There were a thousand
questions he desired to ask, but an innate delicacy restrained him. The
glamour of the hour had dazed this man; his senses were confused. There
was an unreality about the whole experience. The dishes, rattling in the
sink, sounded no differently than when his wife washed them. The
illusion that it was his wife who had come home in this guise had for a
moment dominion over him. The lines of newsprint staggered and swam
before his inattentive eyes. He wondered, wondered, wondered. But he
asked no question of his guest.
When she had finished her self-appointed task and come into the dining
room where he was sitting she seemed to expect a catechism; but Jeff
kept his eyes upon his paper, as a man clings to a safe anchorage, till
at last she was forced to speak.
“I’ve been expecting you to question me,” she said uncertainly.
Jeff looked up at her and then found some reassurance in the fact that
the silence was thus broken. “I’ve been expecting you’d tell me without
asking,” he said, smiling faintly at her.
“I ought to,” she nodded. “But there’s so much to tell; and it must
sound so incredible to you. I hid in your car at the wharf, blindly, not
knowing who you were. I had to get away; wanted to get away. Anywhere.
To hide. For a little while. I can pay you.” She spoke uncertainly,
unwilling to give offense.
Jeff shook his head good-humoredly. “I don’t run a boarding house,
ma’am.”
“I have to find some place where I can stay.”
He was thoughtfully silent for a little, then asked, “How long?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps only a little while.”
“I guess you can stay here a while,” he said.
“You spoke of your wife?” she suggested.
“She’s visiting my daughter, over in Augusta,” Jeff explained. “Won’t be
back for a week anyways. I reckon it’d be easier for you if she was
here; but you’re welcome anyways.”
She looked down helplessly at the gown she wore. “It was a mad thing to
do,” she whispered, half to herself. Jeff guessed what she was thinking.
“I reckon you could wear some of my wife’s things,” he suggested.
“Have you room for me?”
There were two bedrooms on the ground floor of the farmhouse; but he
thought she would prefer a measure of isolation. “I can make the bed in
the room upstairs,” he replied.
“Won’t your neighbors be surprised that I am here?”
Jeff considered that for a long time in silence, till she began to be
afraid the obstacle was insuperable. Then his eyes lighted with
recollection, and he said slowly, “My brother moved to California and
married there, and his girl has been talking about coming to see us. We
can let on you’re her.”
She cried with sudden friendly warmth in her tones, “You’re ever so kind
to me. I appreciate it. Your taking me in so unquestioningly.”
“That’s all right,” he told her.
“I’m going to take you at your word,” she exclaimed. “I’m going to
stay.”