Poor White: Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Hugh and Clara were married in less than a week after their first walk
together. A chain of circumstances touching their two lives hurled them
into marriage, and the opportunity for the intimacy with a woman for which
Hugh so longed came to him with a swiftness that made him fairly dizzy.

It was a Wednesday evening and cloudy. After dining in silence with his
landlady, Hugh started along Turner's Pike toward Bidwell, but when he had
got almost into town, turned back. He had left the house intending to go
through town to the Medina Road and to the woman who now occupied so large
a place in his thoughts, but hadn't the courage. Every evening for almost a
week he had taken the walk, and every evening and at almost the same spot
he turned back. He was disgusted and angry with himself and went to his
shop, walking in the middle of the road and kicking up clouds of dust.
People passed along the path under the trees at the side of the road and
turned to stare at him. A workingman with a fat wife, who puffed as she
walked at his side, turned to look and then began to scold. "I tell you
what, old woman, I shouldn't have married and had kids," he grumbled. "Look
at me, then look at that fellow. He goes along there thinking big thoughts
that will make him richer and richer. I have to work for two dollars a day,
and pretty soon I'll be old and thrown on the scrap-heap. I might have been
a rich inventor like him had I given myself a chance."

The workman went on his way, grumbling at his wife who paid no attention
to his words. Her breath was needed for the labor of walking, and as for
the matter of marriage, that had been attended to. She saw no reason for
wasting words over the matter. Hugh went to the shop and stood leaning
against the door frame. Two or three workmen were busy near the back door
and had lighted gas lamps that hung over the work benches. They did not see
Hugh, and their voices ran through the empty building. One of them, an old
man with a bald head, entertained his fellows by giving an imitation of
Steve Hunter. He lighted a cigar and putting on his hat tipped it a little
to one side. Puffing out his chest he marched up and down talking of money.
"Here's a ten-dollar cigar," he said, handing a long stogie to one of the
other workmen. "I buy them by the thousands to give away. I'm interested in
uplifting the lives of workmen in my home town. That's what takes all my
attention."

The other workmen laughed and the little man continued to prance up
and down and talk, but Hugh did not hear him. He stared moodily at the
people going along the road toward town. Darkness was coming but he could
still see dim figures striding along. Over at the foundry back of the
corn-cutting machine plant the night shift was pouring off, and a sudden
glare of light played across the heavy smoke cloud that lay over the town.
The bells of the churches began to call people to the Wednesday evening
prayer-meetings. Some enterprising citizen had begun to build workmen's
houses in a field beyond Hugh's shop and these were occupied by Italian
laborers. A crowd of them came past. What would some day be a tenement
district was growing in a field beside a cabbage patch belonging to Ezra
French who had said God would not permit men to change the field of their
labors.

An Italian passed under a lamp near the Wheeling station. He wore a bright
red handkerchief about his neck and was clad in a brightly colored shirt.
Like the other people of Bidwell, Hugh did not like to see foreigners
about. He did not understand them and when he saw them going about the
streets in groups, was a little afraid. It was a man's duty, he thought, to
look as much as possible like all his fellow men, to lose himself in the
crowds, and these fellows did not look like other men. They loved color,
and as they talked they made rapid gestures with their hands. The Italian
in the road was with a woman of his own race, and in the growing darkness
put his arm about her shoulder. Hugh's heart began to beat rapidly and he
forgot his American prejudices. He wished he were a workman and that Clara
were a workman's daughter. Then, he thought, he might find courage to go to
her. His imagination, quickened by the flame of desire and running in new
channels, made it possible for him, at the moment to see himself in the
young Italian's place, walking in the road with Clara. She was clad in
a calico dress and her soft brown eyes looked at him full of love and
understanding.

The three workingmen had completed the job for which they had come back to
work after the evening meal, and now turned out the lights and came toward
the front of the shop. Hugh drew back from the door and concealed himself
by standing in the heavy shadows by the wall. So realistic were his
thoughts of Clara that he did not want them intruded upon.

The workmen went out of the shop door and stood talking. The bald-headed
man was telling a tale to which the others listened eagerly. "It's all over
town," he said. "From what I hear every one say it isn't the first time
she's been in such a mess. Old Tom Butterworth claimed he sent her away to
school three years ago, but now they say that isn't the truth. What they
say is that she was in the family way to one of her father's farm hands and
had to get out of town." The man laughed. "Lord, if Clara Butterworth was
my daughter she'd be in a nice fix, wouldn't she, eh?" he said, laughing.
"As it is, she's all right. She's gone now and got herself mixed up with
this swindler Buckley, but her father's money will make it all right. If
she's going to have a kid, no one'll know. Maybe she's already had the kid.
They say she's a regular one for the men."

As the man talked Hugh came to the door and stood in the darkness
listening. For a time the words would not penetrate his consciousness, and
then he remembered what Clara had said. She had said something about Alfred
Buckley and that there would be a story connecting her name with his. She
had been hot and angry and had declared the story a lie. Hugh did not know
what the story was about, but it was evident there was a story abroad, a
scandalous story concerning her and Alfred Buckley. A hot, impersonal anger
took possession of him. "She's in trouble--here's my chance," he thought.
His tall figure straightened and as he stepped through the shop door his
head struck sharply against the door frame, but he did not feel the blow
that at another time might have knocked him down. During his whole life he
had never struck any one with his fists, and had never felt a desire to
do so, but now hunger to strike and even to kill took complete possession
of him. With a cry of rage his fist shot out and the old man who had done
the talking was knocked senseless into a clump of weeds that grew near
the door. Hugh whirled and struck a second man who fell through the open
doorway into the shop. The third man ran away into the darkness along
Turner's Pike.

Hugh walked rapidly to town and through Main Street. He saw Tom Butterworth
walking in the street with Steve Hunter, but turned a corner to avoid a
meeting. "My chance has come," he kept saying to himself as he hurried
along Medina Road. "Clara's in some kind of trouble. My chance has come."

By the time he got to the door of the Butterworth house, Hugh's new-found
courage had almost left him, but before it had quite gone he raised his
hand and knocked on the door. By good fortune Clara came to open it. Hugh
took off his hat and turned it awkwardly in his hands. "I came out here to
ask you to marry me," he said. "I want you to be my wife. Will you do it?"

Clara stepped out of the house and closed the door. A whirl of thoughts ran
through her brain. For a moment she felt like laughing, and then what there
was in her of her father's shrewdness came to her rescue. "Why shouldn't I
do it?" she thought. "Here's my chance. This man is excited and upset now,
but he is a man I can respect. It's the best marriage I'll ever have a
chance to make. I do not love him, but perhaps that will come. This may be
the way marriages are made."

Clara put out her hand and laid it on Hugh's arm. "Well," she said,
hesitatingly, "you wait here a moment."

She went into the house and left Hugh standing in the darkness. He was
terribly afraid. It seemed to him that every secret desire of his life had
got itself suddenly and bluntly expressed. He felt naked and ashamed. "If
she comes out and says she'll marry me, what will I do? What'll I do then?"
he asked himself.

When she did come out Clara wore her hat and a long coat. "Come," she said,
and led him around the house and through the barnyard to one of the barns.
She went into a dark stall and led forth a horse and with Hugh's help
pulled a buggy out of a shed into the barnyard. "If we're going to do it
there's no use putting it off," she said with a trembling voice. "We might
as well go to the county seat and do it at once."

The horse was hitched and Clara got into the buggy. Hugh climbed in and sat
beside her. She had started to drive out of the barnyard when Jim Priest
stepped suddenly out of the darkness and took hold of the horse's head.
Clara held the buggy whip in her hand and raised it to hit the horse. A
desperate determination that nothing should interfere with her marriage
with Hugh had taken possession of her. "If necessary I'll ride the man
down," she thought. Jim came to stand beside the buggy. He looked past
Clara at Hugh. "I thought maybe it was that Buckley," he said. He put a
hand on the buggy dash and laid the other on Clara's arm. "You're a woman
now, Clara, and I guess you know what you're doing. I guess you know I'm
your friend," he said slowly. "You been in trouble, I know. I couldn't help
hearing what your father said to you about Buckley, he talked so loud.
Clara, I don't want to see you get into trouble."

The farm hand stepped away from the buggy and then came back and again put
his hand on Clara's arm. The silence that lay over the barnyard lasted
until the woman felt she could speak without a break in her voice.

"I'm not going very far, Jim," she said, laughing nervously. "This is Mr.
Hugh McVey and we're going over to the county seat to get married. We'll be
back home before midnight. You put a candle in the window for us."

Hitting the horse a sharp blow, Clara drove quickly past the house and into
the road. She turned south into the hill country through which lay the road
to the county seat. As the horse trotted quickly along, the voice of Jim
Priest called to her out of the darkness of the barnyard, but she did not
stop. The afternoon and evening had been cloudy and the night was dark. She
was glad of that. As the horse went swiftly along she turned to look at
Hugh who sat up very stiffly on the buggy seat and stared straight ahead.
The long horse-like face of the Missourian with its huge nose and deeply
furrowed cheeks was ennobled by the soft darkness, and a tender feeling
crept over her. When he had asked her to become his wife, Clara had pounced
like a wild animal abroad seeking prey and the thing in her that was like
her father, hard, shrewd and quick-witted, had led her to decide to see the
thing through at once. Now she became ashamed, and her tender mood took the
hardness and shrewdness away. "This man and I have a thousand things we
should say to each other before we rush into marriage," she thought, and
was half inclined to turn the horse and drive back. She wondered if Hugh
had also heard the stories connecting her name with that of Buckley, the
stories she was sure were now running from lip to lip through the streets
of Bidwell, and what version of the tale had been carried to him. "Perhaps
he came to propose marriage in order to protect me," she thought, and
decided that if he had come for that reason she was taking an unfair
advantage. "It is what Kate Chanceller would call 'doing the man a dirty,
low-down trick,'" she told herself; but even as the thought came she leaned
forward and touching the horse with the whip urged him even more swiftly
along the road.

A mile south of the Butterworth farmhouse the road to the county seat
crossed the crest of a hill, the highest point in the county, and from the
road there was a magnificent view of the country lying to the south. The
sky had begun to clear, and as they reached the point known as Lookout
Hill, the moon broke through a tangle of clouds. Clara stopped the horse
and turned to look down the hillside. Below lay the lights of her father's
farmhouse--where he had come as a young man and to which long ago he had
brought his bride. Far below the farmhouse a clustered mass of lights
outlined the swiftly growing town. The determination that had carried Clara
thus far wavered again and a lump came into her throat.

Hugh also turned to look but did not see the dark beauty of the country
wearing its night jewels of lights. The woman he wanted so passionately
and of whom he was so afraid had her face turned from him, and he dared to
look at her. He saw the sharp curve of her breasts and in the dim light
her cheeks seemed to glow with beauty. An odd notion came to him. In the
uncertain light her face seemed to move independent of her body. It drew
near him and then drew away. Once he thought the dimly seen white cheek
would touch his own. He waited breathless. A flame of desire ran through
his body.

Hugh's mind flew back through the years to his boyhood and young manhood.
In the river town when he was a boy the raftsmen and hangers-on of the
town's saloons, who had sometimes come to spend an afternoon on the river
banks with his father John McVey, often spoke of women and marriage. As
they lay on the burned grass in the warm sunlight they talked and the boy
who lay half asleep nearby listened. The voices came to him as though out
of the clouds or up out of the lazy waters of the great river and the talk
of women awoke his boyhood lusts. One of the men, a tall young fellow with
a mustache and with dark rings under his eyes, told in a lazy, drawling
voice the tale of an adventure had with a woman one night when a raft on
which he was employed had tied up near the city of St. Louis, and Hugh
listened enviously. As he told the tale the young man a little awoke from
his stupor, and when he laughed the other men lying about laughed with him.
"I got the best of her after all," he boasted. "After it was all over we
went into a little room at the back of a saloon. I watched my chance and
when she went to sleep sitting in a chair I took eight dollars out of her
stocking."

That night in the buggy beside Clara, Hugh thought of himself lying by the
river bank on the summer days. Dreams had come to him there, sometimes
gigantic dreams; but there had also come ugly thoughts and desires. By his
father's shack there was always the sharp rancid smell of decaying fish and
swarms of flies filled the air. Out in the clean Ohio country, in the hills
south of Bidwell, it seemed to him that the smell of decaying fish came
back, that it was in his clothes, that it had in some way worked its way
into his nature. He put up his hand and swept it across his face, an
unconscious return of the perpetual movement of brushing flies away from
his face as he lay half asleep by the river.

Little lustful thoughts kept coming to Hugh and made him ashamed. He moved
restlessly in the buggy seat and a lump came into his throat. Again he
looked at Clara. "I'm a poor white," he thought. "It isn't fitten I should
marry this woman."

From the high spot in the road Clara looked down at her father's house and
below at the lights of the town, that had already spread so far over the
countryside, and up through the hills toward the farm where she had spent
her girlhood and where, as Jim Priest had said, "the sap had begun to run
up the tree." She began to love the man who was to be her husband, but like
the dreamers of the town, saw him as something a little inhuman, as a man
almost gigantic in his bigness. Many things Kate Chanceller had said as the
two developing women walked and talked in the streets of Columbus came back
to her mind. When they had started again along the road she continually
worried the horse by tapping him with the whip. Like Kate, Clara wanted to
be fair and square. "A woman should be fair and square, even with a man,"
Kate had said. "The man I'm going to have as a husband is simple and
honest," she thought. "If there are things down there in town that are not
square and fair, he had nothing to do with them." Realizing a little Hugh's
difficulty in expressing what he must feel, she wanted to help him, but
when she turned and saw how he did not look at her but continually stared
into the darkness, pride kept her silent. "I'll have to wait until he's
ready. Already I've taken things too much into my own hands. I'll put
through this marriage, but when it comes to anything else he'll have to
begin," she told herself, and a lump came into her throat and tears to her
eyes.

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