Читать книгу At the Crossroads - Harriet T. Comstock - Страница 8

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“To be sure. It made Aunt Polly seem as grand and big as she really is––only blind folks cannot see––and it made all the blind folks see her for a minute. And it made Uncle Peter––no; it left Uncle Peter as he is!”

“I like that”––drowsily––“and it made us see the man that went to the inn?” Noreen lifted her head, suddenly alert.

“What made you think of him, Noreen?” Mary-Clare stopped swaying to and fro.

“I don’t know, Motherly. Only it was funny how he just came and then the haunt-wind came and Jan-an says she thinks he isn’t. Really we only think we see him.”

“Well, perhaps that’s true, childie. He’s something good, I hope. Now shut your eyes like a dearie, and Mother will rock and sing.”

Mary-Clare fixed her eyes on her child’s face, but she was seeing another. The face of a man whose glance had held hers for a strange moment. She had been conscious, since, of this man’s presence; his name was familiar––she could not forget him, though there was no reason for her to remember him except that he was new; a something different in her dull days.

But Noreen, eyes obediently closed, was pleading in the strange, foolish jargon of her rare moments of relaxation:

“You lit and lock, Motherly, and I’ll luck my lum, just for to-night, and lall aleep.”

“All right, beloved; you may, just for to-night, suck the little thumb, and fall asleep while Mother rocks.”

After a few moments more Noreen was asleep and Mary-Clare carried her to an inner room and put her on her bed. She paused to look at the small sleeping face; she noted the baby outlines that always were so strongly marked when Noreen was unconscious; it hurt the mother to think how they hardened when the child awakened. The realization of this struck Mary-Clare anew and reinforced her to her purpose, for she knew her hour was at hand.

A week before she had dismantled the room in which she now stood. It had once been Doctor Rivers’s chamber; later it had been hers––and Larry’s. The old furniture was 44 now in the large upper room, only bare necessities were left here.

Mary-Clare looked about and her face lost its smile; her head lowered––it was not easy, the task she had set for herself, and after Larry’s visit to the mines it would be harder. She had hoped to see Larry first, for Maclin had a subtle power over him. Without ever referring to her, and she was sure he did not in an intimate sense, he always put Larry in an antagonistic frame of mind toward her. Well, it was too late now to avert Maclin’s influence––she must do the best she could. She went back to the fire and sat down and waited.

It was after ten o’clock when Larry came noisily in. Rivers took his colour from his associates and their attitude toward him. He was a bit hilarious now, for Maclin had been glad to see him; had approved of the results of his mission––though as for that Larry had had little to do, for he had only delivered, to certain men, some private papers and had received others in return; had been conscious that non-essentials had been talked over with him, but as that was part of the business of big inventions, he did not resent it. Maclin had paid him better than he had expected to be paid, shared a good dinner with him and a bottle of wine, and now Rivers felt important and aggressive. Wine’s first effect upon him was to make him genial.

He had meant to resent Mary-Clare’s absence on his arrival, but he had forgotten all about that. He meant now to be very generous with her and let bygones be bygones––he had long since forgotten the words spoken just before he left for his trip. Words due, of course, to Mary-Clare just having had a baby. Almost Larry had forgotten that the baby had been born and had died.

He strode across the room. He was tall, lithe, and good-looking, but his face betokened weakness. All the features that had promised strength and power seemed, somehow, to have missed fulfilment.

Mary-Clare tried to respond; tried to do her full part––it would all help so much, if she only could. But this mood 45 of Larry’s was fraught with danger––did she not know? Success did not make him understanding and considerate; it made him boyishly dominant and demanding.

“Well, old girl”––Rivers had slammed the door after him––“sitting up for me, eh? Sorry; but when I didn’t find you here, I had to get over and see Maclin. Devilish important, big pull I’ve made this time. We’ll have a spree––go to the city, if you like––have a real bat.”

Mary-Clare did not have time to move or speak; Larry was crushing her against him and kissing her face––not as a man kisses a woman he loves, but as he might kiss any woman. The silence and rigidity of Mary-Clare presently made themselves felt. Larry pushed her away almost angrily.

“Mad, eh?” he asked with a suggestion of triumph in his voice. “Acting up because I ran off to Maclin? Well, I had to see him. I tried to get home sooner, but you know how Maclin is when he gets talking.”

How long Larry would have kept on it would have been hard to tell, but he suddenly looked full at Mary-Clare and––stopped!

The expression on the face confronting his was puzzling: it looked amused, not angry. Now there is one thing a man of Larry’s type cannot bear with equanimity and that is to have his high moments dashed. He saw that he was not impressing Mary-Clare; he saw that he was mistaking her attitude of mind concerning his treatment of her––in short, she did not care!

“What are you laughing at?” he asked.

“I’m not laughing, Larry.”

“What are you smiling at?”

“My smile is my own, Larry; when I laugh it’s different.”

“Trying to be smart, eh? I should think when your husband’s been away months and has just got back, you’d meet him with something besides a grin.”

There was some justice in this and Mary-Clare said slowly: “I’m sorry, Larry. I really was only thinking.”

Now that she was face to face with her big moment, Mary-Clare realized anew how difficult her task was. Often, in 46 the past, thinking of Larry when he was not with her, it had seemed possible to reason with him; to bring truth to him and implore his help. Always she had striven to cling to her image of Larry, but never to the real man. The man she had constructed with Larry off the scene was quite another creature from Larry in the flesh. This knowledge was humiliating now in the blazing light of reality grimly faced and it taxed all of Mary-Clare’s courage. She was smiling sadly, smiling at her own inability in the past to deal with facts.

Larry was brought to bay. He was disappointed, angry, and outraged. He was not a man to reflect upon causes; results, and very present ones, were all that concerned him. But he did, now, hark back to the scene soon after the birth and death of the last child. Such states of mind didn’t last for ever, and there was no baby coming at the moment. He could not make things out.

“See here,” he said rather gropingly, “you are not holding a grouch, are you?”

“No, Larry.”

“What then?”

For a moment Mary-Clare shrank. She weakly wanted to put off the big moment; dared not face it.

“It’s late, Larry. You are tired.” She got that far when she affrightedly remembered the bedroom upstairs and paused. She had arranged it for Larry––there must be an explanation of that.

“Late be hanged!” Larry stretched his legs out and plunged his hands in his pockets. “I’m going to get at the bottom of this to-night. You understand?”

“All right, Larry.” Mary-Clare sank back in her chair––she had fallen on her adventurous way; she had no words with which to convey her burning thoughts. Already she had got so far from the man who had filled such a false position in her life that he seemed a stranger. To tell him that she did not love him, had never loved him, was all but impossible. Of course he could not be expected to comprehend. The situation became terrifying.

“You’ve never been the same since the last baby came.” 47 Larry was speaking in an injured, harsh tone. “I’ve put up with a good deal, Mary-Clare; not many men would be so patient. The trouble with you, my girl, is this, you get your ideas from books. That mightn’t matter if you had horse sense and knew when to slam the covers on the rot. But you try to live ’em and then the devil is to pay. Dad spoiled you. He let you run away with yourself. But the time’s come–––”

The long speech in the face of Mary-Clare’s wondering, amazed eyes, brought Larry to a panting pause.

“What you got a husband for, anyway, that’s what I am asking you?”

Mary-Clare’s hard-won philosophy of life stood her in poor stead now. She felt an insane desire to give way and laugh. It was a maddening thing to contemplate, but she seemed to see things so cruelly real and Larry seemed shouting to her from a distance that she could never retrace. For a moment he seemed to be physically out of sight––she only heard his words.

“By God! Mary-Clare, what’s up? Have you counted the cost of carrying on as you are doing? What am I up against?”

“Yes, Larry, I’ve counted the cost to me and Noreen and you. I’m afraid this is what we are all up against.”

“Well, what’s the sum total?” Larry leaned back more comfortably; he felt that Mary-Clare, once she began to talk, would say a good deal. She would talk like one of her books. He need not pay much heed and when she got out of breath he’d round her up. His interview with Maclin had not been all business; the gossip, interjected, was taking ugly and definite form now. Maclin had mentioned the man at the inn. Quite incidentally, of course, but repeatedly.

“You see, Larry, I’ve got to tell you how it is, in my own way,” Mary-Clare was speaking. “I know my way makes you angry, but please be patient, for if I tried any other way it would hurt more.”

“Fire away!” Larry nobly suppressed a yawn. Had Mary-Clare said simply, “I don’t love you any more,” Larry 48 would have got up from the blow and been able to handle the matter, but she proceeded after a fashion that utterly confused him and, instead of clearing the situation, managed to create a most unlooked-for result.

“It’s like this, Larry: I suppose life is a muddle for everyone and we all do have to learn as we go on––nothing can keep us from that, not even marriage, can it?”

No reply came to this.

“It’s like light coming in spots, and then those spots can never be really dark again although all the rest may be. You think of those spots as bright and sure when all else is––is lost. That is the way it has been with me.”

“Gee!” Larry shrugged his shoulders.

“Larry, you must try to understand!” Mary-Clare was growing desperate.

“Then, try to talk American.”

“I am, Larry. My American. That’s the trouble––there is more than one kind, you know. Larry, it was all wrong, my marrying you even for dear Dad’s sake. If he had been well and we could have talked it over, he would have understood. I should have understood for him that last night. Even the letters should not have mattered, they must not matter now!”

This, at least, was comprehensible.

“Well, you did marry me, didn’t you?” Larry flung out. “You’re my wife, aren’t you?” Correcting mistakes was not in Larry’s plan of life.

“I––why, yes, I am, Larry, but a wife means more than one thing, doesn’t it?” This came hopelessly.

“Not to me. What’s your idea?” Larry was relieved at having the conversation run along lines that he could handle with some degree of common sense.

“Well, Larry, marriage means a good many things to me. It means being kind and making a good home––a real home, not just a place to come to. It means standing by each other, even if you can’t have everything!”

Just for one moment Larry was inclined to end this shilly-shallying by brute determination. He was that type of man. 49 What did not come within the zone of his own experience, did not exist for him except as obstacles to brush aside.

It was a damned bad time, he thought, for Mary-Clare to act up her book stuff. A man, home after a three months’ absence, tired and worn out, could not be expected, at close upon midnight, to enjoy this outrageous nonsense that had been sprung upon him.

He must put an end to it at once. He discarded the cave method. Of course that impulse was purely primitive. It might simplify the whole situation but he discarded it. Mary-Clare’s outbursts were like Noreen’s “dressing up”––and bore about the same relation in Larry’s mind.

“See here,” he said suddenly, fixing his eyes on Mary-Clare––when Larry asserted himself he always glared––“just what in thunder do you mean?”

The simplicity of the question demanded a crude reply.

“I’m not going to have any more children.” Out of the maze of complicated ideals and gropings this question and answer emerged, devastating everything in their path. They meant one, and only one, thing to Larry Rivers.

There were some things that could illume his dark stretches and level Mary-Clare’s vague reachings to a common level. Both Larry and Mary-Clare were conscious now of being face to face with a grave human experience. They stood revealed, man and woman. The big significant things in life are startlingly simple.

The man attacked the grim spectre with conventional and brutal weapons; the woman backed away with a dogged look growing in her eyes.

“Oh! you aren’t, eh?” Larry spoke slowly. “You’ve decided, have you?”

“I know what children mean to you, Larry; I know what you mean by––love––yes: I’ve decided!”

“You wedged your way into my father’s good graces and crowded me out; you had enough decency, when you knew his wishes, to carry them out as long as you cared to, and now you’re going to end the job in your own way, eh?

“Name the one particular way in which you’re not going 50 to break your vows,” Larry asked, and sneered. “What’s your nice little plan?” He got up and walked about. “I suppose you have cut and dried some little compromise.”

“Oh! Larry, I wish you could be a little kind; a little understanding.”

“Wish I could think as you think; that’s what you mean. Well, by God, I’m a man and your husband and I’m going to stand on my rights. You can’t make a silly ass of me as you did of my father. Fathers and husbands are a shade different. Come, now, out with your plan.”

“I will not have any more children! I’ll do everything I can, Larry; make the home a real home. Noreen and I will love you. We’ll try to find some things we all want to do together; you and I can sort of plan for Noreen and there are all kinds of things to do around the Forest, Larry. Really, you and I ought to––ought to carry out your father’s work. We could! There are other things in marriage, Larry, but just––the one.” Breathlessly Mary-Clare came to a pause, but Larry’s amused look drove her on. “I’m not the kind of a woman, Larry, that can live a lie!”

A tone of horror shook Mary-Clare’s voice; she choked and Larry came closer, his lips were smiling.

“What in thunder!” he muttered. Then: “You plan to have us live on here in this house; you and I, a man and woman––and–––!” Larry stopped short, then laughed. “A hell of a home that would be, all right!”

Mary-Clare gazed dully at him.

“Well, then,” she whispered, and her lips grew deadly white, “I do not know what to do.”

“Do? You’ll forget it!” thundered Larry. “And pretty damned quick, too!”

But Mary-Clare did not answer. There was nothing more to say. She was thinking of the birth-night and death-night of her last child.

On and on the burning thoughts rushed in Mary-Clare’s brain while she sat near Larry without seeing him. As surely as if death had taken him, he, the husband, the father of Noreen, had gone from her life. It did not seem now as if 51 anything she had said, or done, had had anything to do with it. It was like an accident that had overtaken them, killing Larry and leaving her to readjust her life alone.

“Why don’t you answer?” Larry laid a hand upon Mary-Clare’s shoulder. “Getting sleepy? Come on, then, we’ll have this out to-morrow.” He looked toward the door behind which stood Noreen’s cot and that other one beside it.

“I’ve fixed the room upstairs for you, Larry.”

The simple statement had power to accomplish all that was left to be done. There was a finality about it, and the look on Mary-Clare’s face, that convinced Larry he had come to the point of conquest or defeat.

“The devil you have!” was what he said to gain time.

For a moment he again contemplated force––the primitive male always hesitates to compromise where his codes are threatened. There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes; a ferocious curl of his lips––it would be such a simple matter and it would end for ever the nonsense that he could not tolerate.

Mary-Clare leaned back in her chair. She was so absolutely unafraid that she quelled Larry’s brute instinct and aroused in him a dread of the unknown. What would Mary-Clare do in the last struggle? Larry was not prepared to take what he recognized as a desperate chance. The familiar and obvious were deep-rooted in his nature––if, in the end, he lost with this calm, cool woman whom he could not frighten, where could he turn for certain things to which his weakness––or was it his strength––clung?

A place to come to; someone peculiarly his own; his without effort to be worthy of. Larry resorted to new tactics with Mary-Clare at this critical moment. The smile faded from his sneering lips; he leaned forward and the manner that made him valuable to Maclin fell upon him like a disguise. So startling was the change, that Mary-Clare looked at him in surprise.

“Mary-Clare, you’ve got me guessing”––there was almost surrender in the tone––“a woman like you doesn’t take the stand you have without reason. I know that. Naturally, 52 I was upset, I spoke too quick. Tell me now in your own way. I’ll try to understand.”

Mary-Clare was taken off guard. Her desire and sore need rushed past caution and carried her to Larry.

She, too, leaned forward, and her lovely eyes were shining. “Oh! I hoped you would try, Larry,” she said. “I know I’m trying and put things in a way that you resent, but I have a great, a true reason, if I could only make you see it.”

“Now, you’re talking sense, Mary-Clare,” Larry spoke boyishly. “Just over-tired, I guess you were; seeing things in the dark. Men know the world better than women; that’s why some things are as they are. I’m not going to press you, Mary-Clare, I’m going to try and help you. You are my wife, aren’t you?”

“Yes, oh! yes, Larry.”

“Well, I’m a man and you’re a woman.”

“Yes, that’s so, Larry.”

Step by step, ridiculous as it might seem, Mary-Clare meant, even now, to keep as close to Larry as she could. He misunderstood; he thought he was winning against her folly.

“Marriage was meant for one thing between man and woman!”

This came out triumphantly. Then Mary-Clare threw back her head and spiritually retreated to her vantage of safety.

“No, it wasn’t,” she said, taking to her own hard-won trail desperately. “No, it wasn’t! I cannot accept that Larry––why, I have seen where such reasoning would lead. I saw the night our last baby came––and went. I’d grow old and broken––you’d hate me; there would be children––many of them, poor, sad little things––looking at me with dreadful eyes, accusing me. If marriage means only one thing––it means that to me and you, and no woman has the right to––to become like that.”

“Wanting to defy the laws of God, eh?” Larry grew virtuous. “We all grow old, don’t we? Men work for women; women do their share. Children are natural, ain’t they? 53 What’s the institution of marriage for, anyway?” And now Larry’s mouth was again hardening.

“Larry, oh! Larry, please don’t make me laugh! If I should laugh there would never be any hope of our getting together.”

For some reason this almost hysterical appeal roused the worst in Larry. The things Maclin had told him that day again took fire and spread where Maclin could never have dreamed of their spreading. The liquor was losing its sustaining effect––it was leaving Larry to flounder in his weak will, and he abandoned his futile tactics.

“Who’s that man at the inn?” he asked.

The suddenness of the question, its irrelevancy, made Mary-Clare start. For a moment the words meant absolutely nothing to her and then because she was bared, nervously, to every attack, she flushed––recalling with absurd clearness Northrup’s look and tone.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“That’s a lie. How long has he been here, snooping around?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, Larry.” This was not true, and Larry caught the quiver in the tones.

Again he got up and became the masterful male; the injured husband; the protector of his home. There were still tactics to be tested.

“See here, Mary-Clare, I’ve caught on. You never cared for me. You married me from what you called duty; your sense of decency held until your own comfort and pleasure got in between––then you were ready to fling me off like an old mit and term it by high-sounding names. Now comes along this stranger, from God knows where, looking about for the devil knows what––and taking what lies about in order to pass the time. I haven’t lived in the world for nothing, Mary-Clare. Now lay this along with the other woman-thoughts you’re so fond of. I’m going upstairs, for I’m tired and all-fired disgusted, but remember, what I can’t hold, no other man is going to get, not even for a little time while he hangs about. Folks are going to see just what is going on, 54 believe me! I’m going to leave all the doors and windows open. I’m going to give you your head, but I’ll keep hold of the reins.”

And then, because it was all so hideously wrong and twisted and comical, Mary-Clare laughed! She laughed noiselessly, until the tears dimmed her eyes. Larry watched her uneasily.

“Oh, Larry,” she managed her voice at last, “I never knew that anything so dreadfully wrong could be made of nothing. You’ve created a terrible something, and I wonder if you know it?”

“That’s enough!” Larry strode toward the stairway. “Your husband’s no fool, my girl, and the cheap, little, old tricks are plain enough to him.”

Mary-Clare watched her husband pass from view; heard him tramp heavily in the room above. She sat by the dead fire and thought of him as she first knew him––knew him? Then her eyes widened. She had never known him; she had taken him as she had taken all that her doctor had left to her, and she had failed; failed because she had not thought her woman’s thought until it was too late.

After all her high aims and earnest endeavour to meet this critical moment in her life Mary-Clare acknowledged, as she sat by the ash-strewn hearth, that it had degenerated into a cheap and almost comic farce. To her narrow vision her problem seemed never to have been confronted before; her world of the Forest would have no sympathy for it, or her; Larry had reduced it to the ugliest aspect, and by so doing had turned her thoughts where they might never have turned and upon the stranger who might always have remained a stranger.

Alone in the deadly quiet room, the girl of Mary-Clare passed from sight and the woman was supreme; a little hard, in order to combat the future: quickened to a futile sense of injustice, but young enough, even at that moment, to demand of life something vital; something better than the cruel thing that might evolve unless she bore herself courageously.

Unconsciously she was planning her course. She would 55 go her way with her old smile, her old outward bearing. A promise was a promise––she would never forget that, and as far as she could pay with that which was hers to give, she would pay, but outside of that she would not let life cheat her.

Bending toward the dead fire on the hearth, Mary-Clare made her silent covenant.

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