Part 24

He was fascinated by her naked, shapely arm; it was slender at the wrist, and surprisingly round above, at a soft, brown shadow. He was seized by a desire to touch it, and he held her pointed elbow while he examined the bruises more minutely. "That's bad," he pronounced; "on that pretty skin, too." He was confused by the close proximity of her bare flesh, the pulse in his neck beat visibly.

For a moment she stood motionless; then, with her eyes half closed, sulky, she drew away from him and rearranged her sleeve.

The brush ended on a slope where pine trees had covered the ground with a glossy mat of bronzed needles; and his companion sank to a sitting position with her back against a trunk. They were outside the influence of the camp meeting, beyond its unnatural excitation. The pine trees were black against the brilliant day; they might have been cast in iron, there was no suggestion of growth in the dun covering below; it was as seasonless where they sat as the sea; the air, faintly spiced and still, seemed to have lain unchanged through countless ages.

Meta Beggs sat motionless, with a look of inexpressible boredom on her pale countenance. Her hands, Gordon thought, were like folded buds of the mountain magnolia.

She said, unexpectedly, "You're rich now, aren't you, one of the richest men in the county?"

"Why I--I got some money; that is, my wife has."

She dismissed, with an impatient gesture, the distinction. "Money is life," she continued, with a perceptible, envious longing, "it's freedom, all the things worth having. It makes women--it's their leather boxes full of rings and pins and necklaces, their dresses of all-over lace, their silk and hand scalloped and embroidered underclothes; it's their fascination and chance and power--"

"I would like to see you in some of those lace things," he returned.

"Well, get them for me," she answered hardily.

Utterly unprepared for this direct attack he was thoroughly disconcerted. "Why, certainly!" he replied, laboriously polite, "the next time--I'll do it!--when I'm in Stenton again I'll bring you a pair of silk stockings."

"Black," she said practically, "and size eight and a half. You will like me in black silk stockings," she added enigmatically.

"I'll bet," he replied with enthusiasm. "I won't wait to go, but send for them. You would make the dollars dance. You are different from--" he was going to say Lettice, but, instinctively, he changed it to, "the women around here. You've got an awful lot of ginger to you."

"I know what I want, and I'm not afraid to pay for it. Almost everybody wants the same thing--plenty and pleasure, but they're afraid of the price; they are afraid of it alive and when they will be dead. Women set such a store on what they call their virtue, and men tend so much to the opinion of others, that they don't get anywhere."

"Don't you set anything on your--your virtue?"

"I'd make it serve me; I wouldn't be a silly slave to it all my life. If I can get things with it that's what I'm going to do."

Gordon Makimmon found these potent words from such a pleasing woman as Meta Beggs. Any philosophy underlying them, any ruthless strength, escaped him entirely. They appealed solely to him as "gay," highly suggestive. They stirred his blood into warm, heady tides of feeling. He moved over the smooth covering of pine needles, closer to her. But with an expression of petulance she rose.

"I suppose we must look for Buckley," she observed. Gordon had completely forgotten Buckley Simmons' presence at the camp meeting. The school-teacher, swaying slimly, led the way over the path to the plateau.

They saw Buckley Simmons at once: he was talking in an excited, angry manner to a small group of men. A gesture was made toward Gordon and his companion; Buckley turned, and his face flushed darkly, Gordon, stood still, Meta Beggs fell behind, as the former made his way toward them. Buckley spoke loudly when he was still an appreciable distance away:

"You were mighty considerate about my dusty throat," he began with heavy sarcasm; "I ought to have seen at the time that you had it made up between you. This is the second time that you have broken in on me, Makimmon. I'm not a boy any longer. You can't tread on me. It's going to stop ... now."

"There's nothing for you to get excited about, Buck. Miss Beggs and I took a little stroll while you were away."

"A 'little stroll.'" Buckley produced a heavy gold watch, the highly chased cover of which he snapped back. "Over half an hour," he proclaimed; "you stayed too long this time."

Gordon was aware of a form at his back. He turned, and saw Tol'able.

"What's the trouble, Gord?" the latter asked. Two or three others were compactly grouped behind him.

"Why, Buckley's hot because I walked with Miss Beggs while he took a drink."

The men about Buckley Simmons closed up. "Don't let Gordon crowd you down," they advised their principal; "put it up against him."

"Haven't you got enough at home," Buckley demanded, "without playing around here?"

Anger swiftly rose to Gordon Makimmon's head. His hand fell and remained close by his side. "Keep your tongue off my home," he commanded harshly, "or you will get more than a horsewhipping."

"By God," Buckley articulated. His face changed from dark to pale, his mouth opened, his eyes were staring. He fumbled desperately in his pocket. Gordon's hand closed smoothly, instantly, about the handle of his revolver. But, before he could level it, an arm shot out from behind him, and a stone the size of two fists sped like a bullet, striking Buckley Simmons where his hair and forehead joined. Gordon, in a species of shocked curiosity and surprise, clearly saw the stone hit the other. There was a sound like that made by a heel breaking a scum of ice on a frozen road.