Part 22 (2/2)

”Do you love her, Gordon?” his wife asked.

”No, I don't,” he answered, perceptibly impatient at the question.

”Do you like her better than you like me?”

The palpable answer to her query, that he thought of himself more than either, evaded him. ”I don't like her better than I like you,” he repeated baldly.

Lettice turned to the other woman. ”There's not much you can say,” she declared, ”caught like this trying to steal somebody's husband. And you set over a school of children!”

”I don't choose to be,” Meta Beggs retorted. ”I hate it, but I had to live. If you hadn't had all that money to keep you soft, yes, and get you a husband, you would have had to fight and do, too. You might have been teaching a roomful of little sneaks, and sick to death of it before ever you began ... or you might be on the street--better girls have than you.”

”And you bought her a necklace, Gordon, her--”

All that he now desired was to get Lettice safely home. Another wave of pain rose whitely over her countenance. ”Come on, Lettice,” he urged; ”just step into the buggy.” He waved toward the vehicle, toward the peacefully grazing horse, Mrs. Caley sitting upright and sallow.

”And take him right along with you,” Meta Beggs added; ”your money's tight around his neck.”

Resentment at the implied ignominy penetrated his self-esteem.

”We're going right on now, Lettice,” he continued; ”we must drive as careful as possible.”

”I don't know that I want you,” his wife articulated slowly.

”You can decide that later,” he returned; ”we're going home first.”

She relaxed her fingers, and dropped the pasteboard box on the turf. She stood with her arms hanging limply, breathing in sharp inspirations. She gazed about at the valley, the half-distant maple grove: suddenly the youth momentarily returned to her, the frightened expression of a child abruptly conscious of isolation in an alien, unexpected setting.

”Gordon,” she said rapidly, ”I had to come--find you ... something--” her voice sharpened with apprehension. ”Tell me it will be all right. It won't ... kill me.” She stumbled toward him, he caught her, and half carried her to the buggy, where he lifted her over the step and into the seat. A red-clad arm was supporting her on the other side: it was Meta Beggs.

”You drive,” he directed Mrs. Caley. He held Lettice with her face hidden against his shoulder. The valley was refulgent with early summer, the wheat was swelling greenly, the meadows, threaded by s.h.i.+ning streams were sown with flowers, grazed by herds of cattle with hides like satin, the pellucid air was filled with indefinite birdsong. The buggy lurched over a hillock of gra.s.s, his wife shuddered in his arms, and an unaccustomed, vicarious pain contracted his heart. Where the fields gave upon the road the buggy dropped sharply; Lettice cried out uncontrollably. He cursed Mrs. Caley savagely under his breath, ”Can't you drive,” he asked; ”can't you?”

The ascent to the crown of the ridge was rough, but beyond, winding down to the Greenstream valley, it was worse. The buggy, badly hitched, b.u.mped against the flank of the horse, twisted over exposed boulders, brought up suddenly in the gutters cut diagonally by the spring torrents. Gordon Makimmon forgot everything else in the sole desire to get Lettice safely to their house. He endeavored, by s.h.i.+fting her position, to reduce the jarring of the uneven progress. He realized that she was in a continual agony, and, in that new ability to share it through the dawning consciousness of its brute actuality in Lettice, it roused in him an impotent fury of rebellion. It took the form of an increasing pa.s.sion of anger at the inanimate stones of the road, against Mrs. Caley's meager profile on the dusty hood of the buggy. He whispered enraged oaths, worked himself into an insanity of temper. Lettice grew rigid in his arms. For a while she iterated dully, like the beating of a sluggish heart ”bad ... bad ... bad.” Then dread wiped all other expression from her face; then, again, pain pinched her features.

The buggy creaked down the decline to their dwelling. Gordon supported Lettice to their room; then he stood on the porch without, waiting. The rugged horse, still hitched, s.n.a.t.c.hed with coa.r.s.e, yellow teeth at the gra.s.s. Suddenly Mrs. Caley appeared at a door: she spoke, breaking the irascible silence of months, dispelling the acc.u.mulating ill-will of her pent resentment, with hasty, disjointed words:

”... quick as you can ... the doctor.”

XIX

A hoa.r.s.e, thin cry sounded from within the Makimmon dwelling. It fluctuated with intolerable pain and died abruptly away, instantly absorbed in the brooding calm of the valley, lost in the vast, indifferent serenity of noon. But its echo persisted in Gordon's thoughts and emotions. He was sitting by the stream, before his house; and, as the cry had risen, he had moved suddenly, as though an invisible hand had touched him upon the shoulder. He sat reflected on the sliding water against the reflection of the far, blue sky. One idea ran in a circle through his brain, his lips formed it soundlessly, he even spoke it aloud:

”It ain't as though I had gone,” he said.

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