Part 14 (1/2)

Gordon was totally unaware of her ident.i.ty.

”No,” he replied, hesitatingly, ”I wasn't after him in particular--”

”You don't know me,” she challenged, laughing; ”it's Meta Beggs; I teach the school, you know.”

Instantly the memory returned to him of a woman's round, gleaming shoulders slipping into a web of soft white; he recalled the school-teacher's bitter arraignment of her life, her prospects. ”I didn't know you,” he admitted, ”and that's the fact; it was the dark.” He hesitated once more, conscious of the awkwardness of his position, talking upward to an indistinguishable shape. ”I heard you were back,” he continued impotently.

”Yes,” she a.s.sented, ”there was nothing else open.... Won't you come up and smoke a cigarette? It's pleasant here on the gallery.”

He mounted the steps, making his way over the narrow, hollow-sounding pa.s.sage to her side. She was seated overlooking the rift of the valley.

”I'll get you a chair,” she said, rising. At her side a door opened into a dim room. ”No, no,” he protested, ”let me--in here?”

He entered the room. It was, he divined, hers. His foot struck against a chair, and his hand caught the back. A thin, clinging under-garment rested on it, which he deposited on a vague bed. It stuck to his fingers like a cobweb. There was just room on the balcony to arrange the chairs side by side.

VI

The spring night was potent, warm and damp; it was filled with intangible influences which troubled the mind and stirred the memory to vain, melancholy groping. Meta Beggs was so close to Gordon that their shoulders touched. He rolled a cigarette and lit it, resting his arms upon the railing. Her face was white in the gloom; not white as Lettice's had been, like a flower, but sharply cut like marble; her nose was finely modelled, her lips were delicately curved, but thin, compressed. He could distinguish over her the paramount air of dissatisfaction.

She aroused in him unbidden thoughts; without the slightest freedom of gesture or words she gave the impression of careless license. He grew instinctively, at once, familiar, confidential, in his att.i.tude toward her. And she responded in the same manner; she did not draw back when their arms accidentally met.

An interest, a vivacity of manner, such as Gordon had not experienced for weeks stirred in him. Meta Beggs called back into being the old freedom of stage-driving days, of the younger years. Her manner flattered his s.e.x vanity. They progressed famously.

”You don't like the children any better than you did?”

”They get more like rats every year.”

”I thought about you, held against your will.”

”Don't tell lies; I went right out of your mind.”

”Not as quick as I went out of yours. I did think about you, though--” he stopped, but she insisted upon his finis.h.i.+ng the remark. ”Well, I remembered what you said about your shoulders, and I saw you that night at your window....”

”Men, somehow, are always curious about me,” she remarked indifferently; ”they have bothered me ever since I was a girl. I make them mad. I never worry about such things myself--from the way women talk, and men go on, there must be something left out of me ... it just seems silly to get all red in the face--”

He almost constructed her words into a challenge. Five years ago, he continued, or only two, he would have changed her conception of living, he would have broken down her indifference, but now--His mental deliberations ended abruptly, for, even in his mind, he avoided all reference to Lettice; they studiously omitted her name in their conversation.

”Are you going to the camp meeting on South Fork next week?” she demanded. ”I have never seen one. Buckley Simmons says all sorts of things happen. He's going to take me on Sat.u.r.day. I wish--” she broke off pointedly.

”What?”

”I was going to say that I wish, well--I wish I were going with somebody else than Buckley; he bothers me all the time.”

”I'd like a lot to take you. It's not fit for you to go, though. The best people in Greenstream don't. They get crazy with religion, and with rum; often as not there's shooting.”

”Oh! I had no idea. I don't know as I will go. I wish you would be there.