Part 31

He rose stiffly and threw open the door. Dawn was flushing behind the eastern range; the tops of the mountains were thinly visible on the brightening sky. His dwelling, with every window closed, was silvery with dew. He walked slowly, but without faltering, to the porch, and mounted the steps from the sod; the ascent seemed surprisingly steep, long. The door to the dining room was unlocked and he entered; in the thinning gloom he could distinguish the table set as usual, the coffee pot at Lettice's place glimmering faintly. He turned to the left and passed into their bedroom. The details of the chamber were growing clear: the bed was placed against the farther wall, projecting into the room, its low footboard held between posts that rose slimly dark against the white counterpane beyond; on the right were a window and high chest of drawers, on the left a stand with a china toilet service and a couch covered with sheep skins, roughly tanned and untrimmed. A chair by the bed bore Lettice's clothes, another at the foot awaited his own. By his side a curtain hung out from the wall, forming a wardrobe.

He vaguely made out the form of Lettice sitting upright in the bed, her hands clasped about her knees.

"Your brother-in-law," he observed, "is a powerful spindling man." She made no rejoinder to this, and, after a short pause, he further remarked, "How he gets on sociable I don't see."

His wife's eyes were opened wide, gazing intently into the greying room; not by a sound, a motion, did she show any consciousness of his presence. He was deliberate in his movements, very deliberate, laboriously exact in his mental processes, but they were ordered, logical. It began to annoy him that his wife had made no reply to his pleasantries; it was out of reason; he wasn't drunk like Rutherford Berry.

"I said," he pronounced, "that Berry is a nubbin. Didn't you hear me? haven't you got an answer to you?"

She sat gazing into nothingness, ignoring him completely.

His resentment changed to anger; he moved to the foot of the bed, where, in his shirt sleeves, he harangued her:

"I want a cheerful wife, one with a song to her, and not a dam' female elder around the house. A good woman is a--a jewel, but when your goodness gives you a face ache it's ... it's something different, it's a nuisance. I'd almost rather have a wife that wasn't so good but had some give to her." He sat down, clutching a heavy shoe which came off suddenly. Lettice was as immobile as the chest of drawers.

"Goddy knows," he burst out again, "it's solemn enough around here anyhow with Sim Caley's old woman like a grave hole, and now you go and get it too.... Berry might put up with it, and Sim's just fool-hearted, but a regular man wouldn't abide it, he'd--he'd go to Paris, where the women are civilized and dance all night." He muttered an unintelligible period about French widows and pink.... "Buried before my time," he proclaimed. He stood with his head grizzled and harsh above an absurdly flowing nightshirt. In the deepening light Lettice's countenance seemed thinner than usual, her round, staring eyes were frightened, as though she had seen in the night the visible apparition of the curse of suffering laid upon all birth.

"You look like you've taken leave of your wits," he exclaimed in an accumulated exasperation; "say something." He leaned across the bed, and, grasping her elbow, shook her. She was as rigid, as unyielding, as the bed posts. Then with a long, slow shudder she turned and buried her head in the pillow.

XIV

Rutherford Berry and Effie, Barnwell K. and the delicate Rose, left after breakfast. Sim drove off behind the sturdy horse and Mrs. Caley was audibly energetic in the kitchen. When Gordon appeared on the porch Lettice was seated in the low rocker that had so often held Clare. She responded in a suppressed voice to her husband's salutation. "You went and spoiled Effie's whole visit," she informed him, "making Rutherford drunk."

"Why," he protested, "we never; he just got himself drunk."

"It was mean anyway--sitting drinking all night in the stable."

"You'll say I was drunk too next."

"It doesn't matter to you what I say, or what I go through with. I've stood more than I rightly ought, more than I'm going to--you must give me one thought in a day. You just act low. Father was self-headed, but he was never real trashy. He never got into fights at those common camp meetings."

"I threw the stone that hit Buck, didn't I! I busted his head open, didn't I! Oh, of course, I'm to blame for it all ... put it on me."

"Well, how did you get in it? how did you get mixed up with the school-teacher?"

"I got Mrs. Caley to thank for this, and I'll thank her." He hotly recited the obvious aspect of his connection at the camp meeting with Meta Beggs.

"It sounds all right as far as it goes," she retorted; "but I'll chance there's a good deal more; I'll chance you had it made up to meet her there. You would never have gone for any other reason; I don't believe you have been to a revival for twenty years. You had it made up between you. And that Miss Beggs is too smart for you, she'll fool you all over the mountain. I don't like her either, and I don't want you to give her the satisfaction of making up to you. It's what she'd like--laughing at my back!"

"Miss Beggs never spoke any harm of you."

She made a gesture, hopeless, impatient, at his innocence. Her resentment burst out again, "Why does she want to speak to you--another woman's husband? Anybody knows it's low down. When did you see her? What did you talk about?"

"Of course when I see her coming I ought to go 'round by South Fork," he replied, heavily sarcastic.

"Well, you don't have to stand and talk like I warrant you do. There's something deep about her look."

"I've taken care of myself for some years, and I guess I can keep on."

"You can if you want to go to ruin, like you were when I married you, and you only had one shirt to your name."

"Throw it up to me. It's no wonder a man drinks here, he's got more to forget than to think about." He stepped from the porch, preparing to leave.

"Wait!" she commanded; "I'll put up with being left, and having you drink all night with the beasts, and fooling my money away, but," her voice rose and her eyes burned over dark shadows, "I won't put up with another woman, I won't put up with that thin thing making over my husband. I won't! I won't! do you understand that.... I--I can't."