Poor White: Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Jim Priest was very drunk, but insisted on hitching a team to the
Butterworth carriage and driving it loaded with guests to town. Every one
laughed at him, but he drove up to the farmhouse door and in a loud voice
declared he knew what he was doing. Three men got into the carriage and
beating the horses furiously Jim sent them galloping away.

When an opportunity offered, Clara went silently out of the hot dining-room
and through a door to a porch at the back of the house. The kitchen door
was open and the waitresses and cooks from town were preparing to depart.
One of the young women came out into the darkness accompanied by a man,
evidently one of the guests. They had both been drinking and stood for a
moment in the darkness with their bodies pressed together. "I wish it were
our wedding night," the man's voice whispered, and the woman laughed. After
a long kiss they went back into the kitchen.

A farm dog appeared and going up to Clara licked her hand. She went around
the house and stood back of a bush in the darkness near where the carriages
were being loaded. Her father with Steve Hunter and his wife came and got
into a carriage. Tom was in an expansive, generous mood. "You know, Steve,
I told you and several others my Clara was engaged to Alfred Buckley," he
said. "Well, I was mistaken. The whole thing was a lie. The truth is I shot
off my mouth without talking to Clara. I had seen them together and now and
then Buckley used to come out here to the house in the evening, although he
never came except when I was here. He told me Clara had promised to marry
him, and like a fool I took his word. I never even asked. That's the kind
of a fool I was and I was a bigger fool to go telling the story. All the
time Clara and Hugh were engaged and I never suspected. They told me about
it to-night."

Clara stood by the bush until she thought the last of the guests had gone.
The lie her father had told seemed only a part of the evening's vulgarity.
Near the kitchen door the waitresses, cooks and musicians were being loaded
into the bus that had been driven out from the Bidwell House. She went into
the dining-room. Sadness had taken the place of the anger in her, but when
she saw Hugh the anger came back. Piles of dishes filled with food lay all
about the room and the air was heavy with the smell of food. Hugh stood by
a window looking out into the dark farmyard. He held his hat in his hand.
"You might put your hat away," she said sharply. "Have you forgotten you're
married to me and that you now live here in this house?" She laughed
nervously and walked to the kitchen door.

Her mind still clung to the past and to the days when she was a child and
had spent so many hours in the big, silent kitchen. Something was about
to happen that would take her past away--destroy it, and the thought
frightened her. "I have not been very happy in this house but there have
been certain moments, certain feelings I've had," she thought. Stepping
through the doorway she stood for a moment in the kitchen with her back
to the wall and with her eyes closed. Through her mind went a troop of
figures, the stout determined figure of Kate Chanceller who had known
how to love in silence; the wavering, hurrying figure of her mother; her
father as a young man coming in after a long drive to warm his hands
by the kitchen fire; a strong, hard-faced woman from town who had once
worked for Tom as cook and who was reported to have been the mother of two
illegitimate children; and the figures of her childhood fancy walking over
the bridge toward her, clad in beautiful raiment.

Back of these figures were other figures, long forgotten but now sharply
remembered--farm girls who had come to work by the day; tramps who had been
fed at the kitchen door; young farm hands who suddenly disappeared from the
routine of the farm's life and were never seen again, a young man with a
red bandana handkerchief about his neck who had thrown her a kiss as she
stood with her face pressed against a window.

Once a high school girl from town had come to spend the night with Clara.
After the evening meal the two girls walked into the kitchen and stood by a
window, looking out. Something had happened within them. Moved by a common
impulse they went outside and walked for a long way under the stars along
the silent country roads. They came to a field where men were burning
brush. Where there had been a forest there was now only a stump field and
the figures of the men carrying armloads of the dry branches of trees and
throwing them on the fire. The fire made a great splash of color in the
gathering darkness and for some obscure reason both girls were deeply moved
by the sight, sound, and perfume of the night. The figures of the men
seemed to dance back and forth in the light. Instinctively Clara turned her
face upward and looked at the stars. She was conscious of them and of their
beauty and the wide sweeping beauty of night as she had never been before.
A wind began to sing in the trees of a distant forest, dimly seen far away
across fields. The sound was soft and insistent and crept into her soul. In
the grass at her feet insects sang an accompaniment to the soft, distant
music.

How vividly Clara now remembered that night! It came sharply back as she
stood with closed eyes in the farm kitchen and waited for the consummation
of the adventure on which she had set out. With it came other memories.
"How many fleeting dreams and half visions of beauty I have had!" she
thought.

Everything in life that she had thought might in some way lead toward
beauty now seemed to Clara to lead to ugliness. "What a lot I've missed,"
she muttered, and opening her eyes went back into the dining-room and spoke
to Hugh, still standing and staring out into the darkness.

"Come," she said sharply, and led the way up a stairway. The two went
silently up the stairs, leaving the lights burning brightly in the rooms
below. They came to a door leading to a bedroom, and Clara opened it. "It's
time for a man and his wife to go to bed," she said in a low, husky voice.
Hugh followed her into the room. He walked to a chair by a window and
sitting down, took off his shoes and sat holding them in his hand. He did
not look at Clara but into the darkness outside the window. Clara let down
her hair and began to unfasten her dress. She took off an outer dress and
threw it over a chair. Then she went to a drawer and pulling it out looked
for a night dress. She became angry and threw several garments on the
floor. "Damn!" she said explosively, and went out of the room.

Hugh sprang to his feet. The wine he had drunk had not taken effect and
Steve Hunter had been forced to go home disappointed. All the evening
something stronger than wine had been gripping him. Now he knew what it
was. All through the evening thoughts and desires had whirled through his
brain. Now they were all gone. "I won't let her do it," he muttered, and
running quickly to the door closed it softly. With the shoes still held
in his hand he crawled through a window. He had expected to leap into the
darkness, but by chance his stocking feet alighted on the roof of the farm
kitchen that extended out from the rear of the house. He ran quickly down
the roof and jumped, alighting in a clump of bushes that tore long
scratches on his cheeks.

For five minutes Hugh ran toward the town of Bidwell, then turned, and
climbing a fence, walked across a field. The shoes were still gripped
tightly in his hand and the field was stony, but he did not notice and was
unconscious of pain from his bruised feet or from the torn places on his
cheeks. Standing in the field he heard Jim Priest drive homeward along the
road.

"My bonny lies over the ocean,
My bonny lies over the sea,
My bonny lies over the ocean,
O, bring back my bonny to me."

sang the farm hand.

Hugh walked across several fields, and when he came to a small stream,
sat down on the bank and put on his shoes. "I've had my chance and missed
it," he thought bitterly. Several times he repeated the words. "I've had
my chance and I've missed," he said again as he stopped by a fence that
separated the fields in which he had been walking. At the words he stopped
and put his hand to his throat. A half-stifled sob broke from him. "I've
had my chance and missed," he said again.

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