Part 18 (1/2)
Claude Turpin's wife was among the patrons of the raided room. He led her to their apartment in stem silence. There she wept so remorsefully and besought his forgiveness so pleadingly that he forgot his just anger, and soon he gathered his penitent golden-haired Vivien in his arms and forgave her.
”Darling,” she murmured, half sobbingly, as the moonlight drifted through the open window, glorifying her sweet, upturned face, ”I know I done wrong. I will never touch ice cream again. I forgot you were not a millionaire. I used to go there every day. But to-day I felt some strange, sad presentiment of evil, and I was not myself. I ate only eleven saucers.”
”Say no more,” said Claude, gently as he fondly caressed her waving curls.
”And you are sure that you fully forgive me?” asked Vivien, gazing at him entreatingly with dewy eyes of heavenly blue.
”Almost sure, little one,” answered Claude, stooping and lightly touching her snowy forehead with his lips. ”I'll let you know later on. I've got a month's salary down on Vanilla to win the three-year-old steeplechase to-morrow; and if the ice-cream hunch is to the good you are It again--see?”
XII
THE WHIRLIGIG OF LIFE
Justice-of-the-Peace Benaja Widdup sat in the door of his office smoking his elder-stem pipe. Half-way to the zenith the c.u.mberland range rose blue-gray in the afternoon haze. A speckled hen swaggered down the main street of the ”settlement,” cackling foolishly.
Up the road came a sound of creaking axles, and then a slow cloud of dust, and then a bull-cart bearing Ransie Bilbro and his wife. The cart stopped at the Justice's door, and the two climbed down. Ransie was a narrow six feet of sallow brown skin and yellow hair. The imperturbability of the mountains hung upon him like a suit of armour.
The woman was calicoed, angled, snuff-brushed, and weary with unknown desires. Through it all gleamed a faint protest of cheated youth unconscious of its loss.
The Justice of the Peace slipped his feet into his shoes, for the sake of dignity, and moved to let them enter.
”We-all,” said the woman, in a voice like the wind blowing through pine boughs, ”wants a divo'ce.” She looked at Ransie to see if he noted any flaw or ambiguity or evasion or partiality or self-partisans.h.i.+p in her statement of their business.
”A divo'ce,” repeated Ransie, with a solemn nod. ”We-all can't git along together nohow. It's lonesome enough fur to live in the mount'ins when a man and a woman keers fur one another. But when she's a-spittin' like a wildcat or a-sullenin' like a hoot-owl in the cabin, a man ain't got no call to live with her.”
”When he's a no-'count varmint,” said the woman, ”without any especial warmth, a-traipsin' along of scalawags and moons.h.i.+ners and a-layin' on his back pizen 'ith co'n whiskey, and a-pesterin' folks with a pack o'
hungry, triflin' houn's to feed!”
”When she keeps a-throwin' skillet lids,” came Ransie's antiphony, ”and slings b'ilin' water on the best c.o.o.n-dog in the c.u.mberlands, and sets herself agin' cookin' a man's victuals, and keeps him awake o'
nights accusin' him of a sight of doin's!”
”When he's al'ays a-fightin' the revenues, and gits a hard name in the mount'ins fur a mean man, who's gwine to be able fur to sleep o'
nights?”
The Justice of the Peace stirred deliberately to his duties. He placed his one chair and a wooden stool for his pet.i.tioners. He opened his book of statutes on the table and scanned the index.
Presently he wiped his spectacles and s.h.i.+fted his inkstand.
”The law and the statutes,” said he, ”air silent on the subjeck of divo'ce as fur as the jurisdiction of this co't air concerned. But, accordin' to equity and the Const.i.tution and the golden rule, it's a bad barg'in that can't run both ways. If a justice of the peace can marry a couple, it's plain that he is bound to be able to divo'ce 'em.
This here office will issue a decree of divo'ce and abide by the decision of the Supreme Co't to hold it good.”
Ransie Bilbro drew a small tobacco-bag from his trousers pocket. Out of this he shook upon the table a five-dollar note. ”Sold a b'arskin and two foxes fur that,” he remarked. ”It's all the money we got.”
”The regular price of a divo'ce in this co't,” said the Justice, ”air five dollars.” He stuffed the bill into the pocket of his homespun vest with a deceptive air of indifference. With much bodily toil and mental travail he wrote the decree upon half a sheet of foolscap, and then copied it upon the other. Ransie Bilbro and his wife listened to his reading of the doc.u.ment that was to give them freedom:
”Know all men by these presents that Ransie Bilbro and his wife, Ariela Bilbro, this day personally appeared before me and promises that hereinafter they will neither love, honour, nor obey each other, neither for better nor worse, being of sound mind and body, and accept summons for divorce according to the peace and dignity of the State.
Herein fail not, so help you G.o.d. Benaja Widdup, justice of the peace in and for the county of Piedmont, State of Tennessee.”
The Justice was about to hand one of the doc.u.ments to Ransie. The voice of Ariela delayed the transfer. Both men looked at her. Their dull masculinity was confronted by something sudden and unexpected in the woman.