Left alone, Margaret removed her wedding gown and put on one of her new dresses, a dark red silk over red merino, which fitted to perfection. She glanced in the mirror, was dreamily amazed at the beauty that gazed back at her, and went down the staircase.
Exclamations of admiration broke from the ladies; the gentlemen merely stared as Margaret entered. John, who was already carving the great hams, glanced up. He stood there, knife in hand, without moving. But Margaret looked at none of the guests, only at Miss Betsy; on the older woman’s face there glinted a cold smile of triumph.
In her hushed dreaminess, Margaret was not aware of what she ate, of what she said or did, or whether she smiled or laughed. Neither could she think; at times her eyes closed, and she felt that she was sinking into a deep and cushioned sleep. She would start to consciousness, sounds and voices unbearably sharp in her ears. She was not unaware of the envy and the malice of the women present, but she did not care. She kept telling herself that tomorrow there would be light and sun, and she would be able to fix things securely in her mind.
When the rain had stopped a little there was a rush over the dark moist earth to the barn. It was brightly lighted; the musicians were already playing seductive waltzes and square dances when Margaret entered with John. The gaiety, the laughter, the music, only increased her sense of bemusement.
It was not for some time that she realized Miss Betsy had gone.
On a sudden impulse Margaret opened the door and slipped out into the windy darkness of the night. She ran lightly to the house and as she approached she became aware of the thunderous sound of an organ. She let herself inside and crept softly to the door of the parlor. It stood open; bleak and silent, except for the fire behind the grate and Miss Betsy, rigid and gray at the ancient organ.
Her back was to Margaret, and so she did not see her enter. Her body was stiff and emaciated in the black silk. As though Margaret’s entrance were a signal, the organ seemed to draw a tremendous breath, and from it rolled bitter echoes, majestic, heroic, and yet contemptuous. They surged against the walls, rolled back, like a giant that strained at chains. The sound caught at Margaret; involuntarily she put her hands to her ears, shivering, as though the cry came from her and she would suppress it. She was not aware that she was weeping. In that music, she had lost orientation. It was only after a long time that she became aware that everything was silent. She shook her head slightly; as through the mists of a dream she saw that Miss Betsy had turned to her on the organ bench, and that she was looking at her with perfectly expressionless eyes, her hands still on the keys.
Margaret walked to the organ and looked down at the older woman without speaking. They stared into each other’s eyes for a long time. It was Miss Betsy who looked away. She smiled a little grimly.
“Child, what are you doing, coming back here?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” the girl answered quietly. She rubbed the old mahogany of the instrument with the palm of her hand.
Then, abruptly, Miss Betsy closed the organ and turned to Margaret. She began to speak without looking at the girl.
“I’ve watched you. You aren’t a fool, like everyone else. But you still have some foolishness. Folks like you, and like I was, think it’s something superior to make long and romantic faces at the moon, and sigh deeply. It isn’t superior, and it isn’t very bright. And sometimes, when you get to the place where you realize you haven’t been very bright, it’s too late. Folks won’t let you forget; they keep on acting as though you hadn’t realized what a fool you had been; they won’t believe you realize at last. And the worse part of it is that even if they’d let you alone, you’d never forget, either. You’d never forget how much of life you had lost during that time, and how you’ll never regain it. And then, when folks won’t let you forget, you’ll hate ’em; and finally, you hate everything.”
Was she trying to tell Margaret that she had been a fool not to have followed her real desire and gone off with Ralph? But how could she have known about Ralph anyway? It was very confusing. During these bewildered thoughts Margaret gazed at Miss Betsy earnestly. She felt that the older woman could tell her something if she would.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said finally. “In what way am I being a fool?”
The pale gray eyes behind the spectacles looked hot and painful.
“Then, I see you haven’t found out. Perhaps it won’t come sudden, and you’ll get over it, like getting over typhoid, slow and long, but sure. And you’ll be none the worse. But, if your sickness goes on making you see things that don’t exist, like a person in a fever, and then you wake up, you’re going to hate yourself for a long time. If you want to be a fool, don’t let anyone guess it! That’s the trouble with most of us; we call the whole world to come out and watch us make fools of ourselves! You must keep it a secret!”
Margaret looked at her with quick fear and shrinking. Why, the woman was crazy! The hotness in the sunken gray eyes had turned to flame; her mouth twisted from side to side, convulsively, and the cords in her thin throat struggled with vehemence. She leaned so closely to Margaret that the girl could feel gusts of her hot breath in her face, and she involuntarily recoiled a step, glancing fearfully for a moment over her shoulder at the closed door.
Miss Betsy drew her handkerchief swiftly, almost furtively, over her lips. Then she looked at the piece of linen absently. She seemed to have forgotten Margaret; her face was entirely composed.
Then a door opened and slammed, and John’s voice shouted in the dining room “Maggie! Where the devil are you?”
Margaret drew a deep breath. She had the feeling that she had been wandering in a crooked underground cavern, had turned a corner, seen sunlight, and heard a human shout close at hand. She ran to the door, opened it, called an answer in a ringing voice. Then she glanced back at Miss Betsy.
She was quietly turning down the wick of the lamp; a moment later she knelt and poked the fire. It blazed up, scarlet on her bony profile with its grim lips and the creases about them.
Margaret had two swift thoughts, Was her husband’s aunt insane? Was she a friend or an enemy?
She went out into the dim hallway. John was waiting for her, puzzled and a little impatient. He came forward and seized her arm.
“Why’d you run off, Mag?”
“I wondered about your aunt, John. She wasn’t over to the barn; I came back to see about her.”
John raised his eyebrows.
“Aunt Betsy? Why, she never goes no place, dancin’ least of all.”
His expression of surprise lingered. His aunt had always been there in the background of his life, silent and efficient, but this was the first time that he thought of her as a human being. He found the idea novel.
“I kin see her dancin’!” he laughed. Margaret bit her lip, and her brows drew together.
“It isn’t dancing, John. It’s—something else. You never speak about her; she might just as well be stock.”
John grinned. “There are some that think wimin folks is stock, Mag, belonging’ to the man that owns them. Wimin folks, cattle, sheep, all the same. You, you’re different, and I—But, Mag, this ain’t the time for such talk! Let’s be gettin’ back to the music.”
Margaret stared at him blankly, but she did not see him. She saw the dignity of Betsy Hobart’s gaunt figure, the flaming gray eyes, the emaciated but beautifully formed hands. And then, her gaze focusing, she saw John, tall, proud, grasping at life with both hands. So there were men who considered they owned their women folks, owned their women as they owned their cows! Earthy, insensitive men like John …
“Come on, let’s get out of here, back to the barn,” John said impatiently, bursting into her thoughts with power and abruptness. He put his arms about her, nudged back her head with the side of his cheek, and kissed her long and slowly on the lips. For one blinding moment she saw Ralph’s face, his wounded eyes. She struggled, and then her will dissolved, was swallowed up in a languor of inexplicable desire
. Ralph’s face died away.
CHAPTER TEN
There were three vases in the druggist’s window, green, yellow and red, filled with translucent and motionless liquid. Ralph Blodgett stood before the window and gazed at them, sinking deep into their color as into a sea. He shivered in the chill wind of the early November day and thought bitterly of his long ride from Whitmore to Williamsburg, how aglow he had been, how he had looked about him with bemused and smiling eyes. It was not until, at dawn, when he arrived at the deserted depot in Williamsburg that a feeling of lostness began to creep over him. He had stood in the waiting room, his bag beside him, and wondered what to do next. The room was empty; in the distance was the loud thunder of passing freight trains, the hollow echoing of disconnected sounds.
“Anythin’ I can do for you, son?” called the stationmaster through the grating of the ticket window.
“I’m a stranger in town,” said Ralph, hope in his voice. He looked at the older man eagerly. “I’m not quite sure where to go.”
“Where you from?”
“Whitmore. I just came in.”
“Well, it’s most mornin’. I ’spect what you’d like is a boardinghouse, or hotel. Got any money?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Ralph confidently.
“Well, I ’spect you ain’t got so much that you can stand a hotel. Good roomin’ house, good plain grub, that’s what you want. Wait a minute.”
He disappeared from behind the grating. A moment later he could be heard shouting into the baggage room. “Bob! Hey you, Bob!” Then a ruddy Swede with tremendous shoulders emerged.
“Got a young fellow in there,” said the stationmaster, jerking his bald head toward the waiting room. “No folks or anybody in town. Looks like he ain’t got too much cash. Whyn’t you take him down to a boardin’ house and get him settled?”
“You say, boss,” replied Bob, touching his forehead.
The boardinghouse was filthy, bare and dismal. For four dollars a week, the slatternly landlady offered a room and two meals a day, Sunday dinner twenty-five cents extra. She catered to mill laborers and dray drivers, and when they were home it was like a barracks full of ribald and quarrelsome giants.
Ralph was lost in all this and his only sanctuary was his hall bedroom. And when that was unbearable he fled from his room to the streets, full of traffic, crowds, and icy November winds. Days went by like this, as he wandered aimlessly through the streets. He was jostled, cursed at, as he stood directly in the streams of traffic, looking about him with lost eyes.
He had realized from the first that if he were to remain in Williamsburg he would have to have a job. But he was too proud to face being rejected by inferior men, as inwardly he knew he would be. Nevertheless he had to face it, for his funds were running dangerously low, so one morning he left the house early, thinking of Margaret and determined to find work. That night he returned, tired and utterly beaten. But fear of being less a man than others gave him courage, so he went on like this day after day. He had to drive himself to leave the house, and as his money shrank, so grew his despair.
He thought once of his poetry, but he shrank at the image of alien eyes reading the lines that Margaret had loved. He could deceive her, but not himself.
It was on the fourteenth day after his arrival in Williamsburg that he stood before the druggist’s window and suddenly realized, in a flash of maturity, that he and Margaret had been fools.
Ralph had never known that there were so many bewildering fields of labor in the world. Each morning he picked up a discarded newspaper in the reeking dining room and carefully looked over the advertisements for help. There were requests for such exotic creatures as bushelmen, toolmakers, assemblers, and diemakers. He wondered what they were, listlessly.
Then one day he read an advertisement for a copy boy in the office of the Williamsburg Courier. He did not have the vaguest conception of what a copy boy was, but he knew that he filled the requirements of at least one year of high school and a neat hand. He brushed his thin coat, polished his boots, and set forth.
The offices of the Williamsburg Courier were large, urbane, and warm. Ralph’s old shyness returned as he asked for the city editor. The city editor was also owner of the newspaper, but even though Ralph’s eye dimly noted the name, Alfred Holbrooks, lettered upon a closed door, it did not register with any significance in his mind. He knocked gently, was shouted to from behind the door, and entered.
There were four men at desks in the room, wearing green eyeshades; they worked in their shirtsleeves and chewed tobacco. There was a warm and incredible disorder in this room, much more heartening than the neatness of the outer offices. Under glaring and spluttering gas lights spittoons glittered; at the windows the November sleet lowered and whistled. Each man leaned over his desk, rapidly writing, actively spitting, grunting, tossing paper into overflowing baskets.
The city editor was a bluff, gigantic man who ran to flabbiness instead of muscle. He was chewing a cigar, his red forehead wrinkling under a green eyeshade. The gaslights flared down on a round pink skull incredibly bald, and rolls of hard fat at the base of the brain.
As Ralph entered, he glanced up inquiringly. “Yes?” he asked.
“You—You advertised for a copy boy.” Ralph straightened and tried to look winning.
“What makes you think you’d make a good copy boy?”
“Well, I’ve got a good education and can write neatly, and—”
“And—what else?”
“I need the job,” replied Ralph with the simplicity of despair.
Holbrooks grunted. “That’s as good a reason as any. Where you from?”
Ralph breathed deeply. “Whitmore township.”
Holbrooks took the cigar from his mouth.
“Whitmore township? Say, you wouldn’t happen to know my half-brother, Seth Holbrooks, would you?”
“Oh, yes!” Ralph said quickly, feeling confidence return. “They don’t live far from my folks! Yes, I know Seth Holbrooks well!”
“You do, eh? What’s your name?”
“Ralph Blodgett.”
“Blodgett, eh? Say, then, you must be Susie Blodgett’s boy. Well, I’ll be damned! Your great-grandpap and my grandpap were first cousins! Say, I was raised in that country! Left it, though, before your time; thirty years ago. Just a shaver myself, looking for a job in town after Dad died. I ain’t been back there since I left. Say, my daughter, Lydia, was just down there on a visit. Did you see her?”
Ralph had a hazy recollection of pink dimples, chestnut curls, and tiny white hands.
“Of course, I remember Lydia! She came to see my mother one day. It seems to me that I heard she was going to marry Johnny Hobart. Do you know Johnny Hobart? He’s the squire, and the richest man in that country.”
“John Hobart? I remember his dad, though. Mean as hell and closer than his skin. Yes, Lydia did mention young John. Said something in one letter about him being interested in her, and being very rich and big as a bull. I was going down there to see for myself when she wrote she had given him a no answer, after all. Seems she said something about him getting in a huff and marrying some other girl down there.”
Holbrooks’ chair creaked as he pulled his massive bulk upright and returned to business. His face sharpened.
“So, you need a job, eh? Know how much we pay a copy boy? Seven dollars a week. Hours from seven in the morning to six or more at night. How old are you, anyway? Around twenty? Um. Not much money for a man of that age. You don’t know nothing about what’s wanted, too. You couldn’t live on that.”
Ralph calculated rapidly. Four dollars for board and room—“Yes, I could!” he cried eagerly. “It’s a start, anyway, Mr. Holbrooks. I can do the work, and I’ll do it well. You won’t be sorry if you give me the job.”
Holbrooks shrugged.
“All right, then. It’s yours. Seven in the morning.”
“Thank you, Mr. Holbrooks!” Ralph said quickly. He could hardly believe his luck. “Thank y
ou! I’ll be here in the morning! This means a great deal to me—”
“All right, all right. Now, get out, I’m busy!”
Ralph’s hand was already on the door when it burst open and Lydia Holbrooks, radiant in sealskin jacket and cloque, bounced into the room. Her chestnut curls rioted about her pink cheeks; her little hands were hidden in a small round muff. She collided with Ralph and recoiled.
“Oh! Oh, dear!” Her muff dropped to the floor; he picked it up and gave it to her gravely. She looked at him curiously, as she looked at all young men, and then her smile faded and a startled look came into her eyes.
“Why! Why, it’s Mr. Blodgett! What on earth are you doing here?”
“I’m going to work for your father, Miss Lydia.”
Her eyes leaped beyond him to her father, who was grinning at her with fondness. Her mouth fell open in wonder, and then, as she looked at Ralph again, something hard passed over her face.
“Oh,” she said, with sudden and hypocritical gravity. “I see. Oh. I’m so sorry, Mr. Blodgett, about—everything.”
“Why—what do you mean?” asked Ralph, puzzled.
“Why, what else but Maggie Hamilton? Of course, that’s why you left home, after the way she treated you.”
Ralph went a little white; a premonition clutched him.
“I don’t know what you mean, Miss Lydia.” He tried to look merely curious. “Margaret and I are going to be married just as soon as I can send for her. I left home a few weeks ago, so I could make a place for her—”
An expression of shock passed over Lydia’s face. Then her eyes widened. It was evident to her that Ralph knew nothing as yet. She let her lip quiver slightly, and walked slowly to her father’s desk.
“Oh, Papa, I can’t tell him! It’s too horrible!”
“Tell me,” Ralph whispered, coming slowly back to the desk. “Please tell me.”
“Oh, Mr. Blodgett, that I should be the one to tell you! But didn’t you know that Maggie Hamilton married Mr. John Hobart over two weeks ago? I attended their wedding. And she did look so funny, in a queer gown in the church—”