Читать книгу The Mad Carews - Martha Ostenso - Страница 6

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In November of the year in which Elsa Bowers was fourteen, the man whom Dale Whitney had hired at harvest time was found dead beside a fencepost that had been attacked by dry rot. A green post which he had cut near the creek and carried to the spot to replace the old one was lying on the ground beside him.

“Just as if a man is meant to go so far and no farther with the work of this world,” old Sarah Phillips observed when she visited the Bowerses on the following Sunday afternoon. “Aye—like a thief in the night—that’s what it says. And so it is, so it is!”

From the table in the sitting-room came Uncle Fred’s sudden, “Je-hosh-a-phat!” followed by Steve Bowers’ roar of laughter. The Lord, Elsa’s father contended, did not hold it greatly against a man that he played cards on a Sunday when he was too tired to play on any other day of the week. He and Uncle Fred had spent most of the afternoon over a game of pinochle. Elsa paused in her work of setting the table and glanced through the sitting-room doorway. Her father was leaning back in his chair, chuckling heartily at Uncle Fred, who wagged his head slowly and clucked lugubriously as he reshuffled the cards. And from the kitchen came the thin voice of Sarah Phillips and her age-old cackle of the dying and of the gloomy mischance that lurks in the pathway of the living.

How readily life took on an air of festivity, Elsa thought, in spite of poor old Sarah’s muttering; in spite of the man who had lain all day beside a rotten fencepost, dead with his task half done; in spite of the countless hurts that time somehow eases until you can finally forget. There was, for example, the horrible memory of that day in August, four years ago now, when Elsa had gone about all day in the fear that Reef would never waken from the sleep into which he had fallen after the visit of Doctor Olson. The sharp agony of that day had dulled with the passing seasons and might have been at last forgotten had it not been for a look that had come into Reef’s eyes one day in the spring of the year now closing, when he had come in from school to tell them that Bayliss Carew had been chosen valedictorian of the class that was to be graduated a month later from the high school at Hurley. The honor was Reef’s, by every right, but he was not a Carew. The look that Elsa had seen in Reef’s eyes was neither of disappointment nor of envy. It was the old look she had surprised there more than four years ago when Reef had taken the lines from his father and had started to drive the team to the field—only to surrender them a moment later because he could not hold the team in check with one hand, and that the left hand. “If I only had my two hands, now,” he had said—and that was all. And then there had come that look into his eyes! The same look it was that Elsa saw there when he came in to tell them of the honor that had fallen upon Bayliss Carew. They had been silent for a moment after he had told them the news and Elsa, watching him narrowly, was almost sure he had whispered, “If I only had my two hands, now....” With Reef away at law school in Minneapolis, now, however, even that hurt was less.

With no more provocation than that it was a Sunday evening in November, with cold veal and pumpkin pie for supper, and with her father and Uncle Fred playing pinochle in the sitting-room, the house glowed and swelled with eager life. It was as if it said: I am here on the prairie, four walls and a roof, sheltering and warming human creatures against the coming of night and a raw wind blowing out of a lonely, yellowing west! It was the white tablecloth instead of the one with the red checks. That signified Sunday and the presence of a visitor, even though the visitor was no one but poor old Sarah Phillips. It was festive, too, when you placed beside the cut-glass berrybowl—Elsa had once told Lily Fletcher that it was cut-glass, and now almost believed it herself—the silver spoon with the arched handle, which had been presented in a three-piece set to her mother at a farewell surprise party given in her honor before they left Iowa.

Elsa’s mother came to the doorway and gave the table a look of appraisal. “Water on the table, Elsa!” Her voice was quick, cheerful, in momentary contentment that she was caring for her own. “Come on now, Steve—Fred! Sit in. Mrs. Phillips! Come, Leon! Bring the potatoes off the back of the stove, Elsa!”

As she spoke, she moved the silver reflector behind the wall lamp so that it would shine directly on the table. Elsa had long since got over her amusement at seeing her face reflected in the concave mirror at the back of the lamp, but Leon still made faces into it on occasion.

“Might as well bring that lamp in with you, Pa. I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a decent light on a Sunday.” A touch of sad complaining shadowed Mrs. Bowers’ voice at times, as if she expected but grudging compliance on the part of those she addressed.

They were all seated at last and Leon said grace, hostilely; a stiff, swift mumble. Then Elsa’s father began to chuckle afresh, going over the points of the game to show Uncle Fred where he had lost. Uncle Fred was plainly nettled by his defeat. He wagged his head, looking very old and tired of his body, Elsa thought. One of these days they would be finding him lying in a field, maybe, or beside a fencepost, his work suddenly at an end.

“It’s goin’ round that Florence Carew is goin’ to marry Mahlon Breen, come January next,” old Sarah Phillips observed to Elsa’s mother.

Steve Bowers ceased baiting Uncle Fred to listen to the old woman’s gossip.

“Florence Carew going to marry the banker?” he exclaimed in surprise. “Why, Florence is only a girl!”

“Old enough, I guess,” Elsa’s mother spoke up. “Near two years older than Bayliss and he’s—” She turned to Elsa.

“Nineteen,” Elsa told her.

“I know,” her father went on, “but Mahlon Breen is in his forties, I’ll bet.”

Elsa’s mother smiled; a wry, hard smile. “Steve Bowers, you never will get over thinking that every one else in the world acts the same as you. The Carews have a way of getting on in the world and if Seth Carew marries his girl to the banker in Sundower, it’s just——”

“Pshaw, Ma!” Elsa’s father interrupted. “You talk like you had it in for them Carews all the time. What harm have they ever done us? And I’m sure I wish Mahlon Breen luck, the old gadabout, if it’s true.”

“Oh, it’s true, right enough!” old Sarah piped up.

But Steve Bowers went on. “If I hadn’t got that loan from Breen last summer, Reef would be plugging along on the farm today instead of going to law school in Minneapolis.”

“While young Bayliss plays around home,” Elsa’s mother commented. Elsa saw that her mother was already over the excitement of making supper, and was lapsing, as usual, into discontent.

“As if that was any business of ours,” her father retorted, a little impatiently.

Uncle Fred stared down at his plate, then wrinkled his high, narrow forehead. “I guess there was doin’s over to the big house early this mornin’,” he said, “though that mayn’t be our business, either.”

Elsa’s father looked furtively at her mother. He had a vast indifference to sustain, an altogether lofty indifference to anything the Carews might take into their heads to do. And yet—“Doings? What doings, Fred?”

“I met their hired man, Dave Miller, on the road this mornin’,” Uncle Fred went on. “Seems Miss Hildreth drove the gray team over Hurley way before daybreak this mornin’. She come back at sun-up with him in the seat beside her, not able——”

“Him? Who, Fred?” Elsa’s mother interrupted.

Uncle Fred turned upon her querulously. “Who? Ain’t I said who? Who would it be? Seth’s gone to Minneapolis, what for nobody knows. An’ it couldn’t be Seth’s boy, Michael, an’ him away to college. An’ it wasn’t young Bayliss. Who would it be but Peter Carew?”

Elsa’s mother sighed. “Oh, well! What happened?”

“A plenty, I guess,” Uncle Fred resumed. “Miss Hildreth must ’a’ picked him up some’eres along the road to Hurley an’ brought him home. Dave Miller says Peter’s wife, Grace herself, come out an’ dragged him into the house. An’ Dave says Peter wasn’t in Hurley last night a-tall, ’cause Dave was over there himself an’ he never seen hide nor hair of a Carew in town all evenin’. You can make your own guess, if you want.”

He chewed significantly, pulling his thin face to one side.

“Down south of Hurley, I’ll bet,” Elsa’s father exclaimed, forgetting himself for the moment. “Down with that pack of Bohemian dogs, I’ll bet a dollar, and their——”

“Watch your tongue, Pa!” Elsa’s mother said calmly.

Uncle Fred cackled knowingly. “Bet your life he was. An’ what’s more, Grace and Hildreth both know it an’ are tryin’ to cover it up. They was at church this mornin’—the two old ones and the two young ones—up to Sundower. Dave says when they come back from church Peter was out lookin’ over his horses, fresh as a new-laid egg, just as if nothin’ was wrong. An’ Grace and Hildreth goes up an’ kisses him like it was a weddin’ or somethin’. That’s the way Dave puts it.”

Sarah Phillips turned the talk to news of Nate Brazell and Fanny Ipsmiller who kept Nels Lundquist’s house. Elsa listened to them, the murmur of their voices sounding far away as she thought of Peter Carew and the dark hints that Uncle Fred had made concerning where he had spent last night. To Elsa, Peter Carew had gradually become something at once sinister and splendid, with this oblique talk of him in the house and at the table. He rode a horse as no one else in the country could. Peter Carew was bronzed and massive—and he was forever laughing, it seemed. He often rode past the Bowers place on his way to Sundower or Hurley. He always stopped for a chat with any one who happened to be about. Once when Elsa was wading in the ditch along the road, Peter Carew had come by on his beautiful, nervous chestnut horse, and had called out, “Look out there, little girl, or you’ll get your feet wet!” Elsa had looked straight at him and had called back, “I want to get my feet wet.” Then he had laughed and laughed, and had ridden away waving his riding whip at her, laughing marvelously. Elsa had been mortified at her own stupidity, after she had had time to think it over, but later, when she thought of Peter Carew, it seemed to her that he had gone down the road only a little way, and then had floated up into the air and afar among the great blue-white balloon clouds that had been in the sky that day.

On a Saturday that was brown with late November, and when crows were flocking in black, sorrowful companies over the stripped fields, and dead leaves were lying flat and still and clear under the glass of rain pools in the ditches along the road, Elsa drove alone in the old Bowers democrat through Elder’s Hollow. Early that fall, her mother had sent to the city for a knitting machine in the hope that she might be able to supply her neighbors with woolen socks and stockings and knitted scarfs and so have a little something in her pocket when she went to Sundower or to Hurley. It was more than a month now since she had gone the rounds of the district and talked with the women. On the seat beside Elsa lay the box of knitted goods tagged with slips of white paper on which her mother had written the names of the women to whom the articles were to be delivered.

The idea of spending a day among the neighbors had been a very pleasant one to Elsa until her mother had suggested that it might be profitable to call on the Carews and show them a sample of the work. “They can’t do more than say no,” her mother had observed defensively. But Elsa felt that they might, somehow, and dreaded the visit.

She set out early in the afternoon, dressed snugly in a red “stocking-cap” and Reef’s sheepskin lined jacket, for there was no shelter on the democrat. The fields were swept by a high wind, fresh and wet from the rain of the night before, and running like a cool tide in the sea of the air. Wherever the wind was bound, Elsa thought, there the whole world seemed to be going. Here in an empty field a band of dry reeds stood, bowed and following the wind, each flying at its top, like a pennant, a single little withered leaf. When the horses lagged for a moment on the crest of a knoll, Elsa raised her head and listened. To her ears, schooled to sounds of earth and air, came the dim rumor of flight. It was the flight of the wild duck—the wild duck, too, flying with the wind.

Below the knoll she crossed a bridge over the sluggish creek beside which cat-tails stood, then took the rough road that led up to the house in which “Doc” Petersen lived. It was said that “Doc” could raise nothing on that farm of his but children. As Elsa drove into the yard on this November day, the children ran to meet her as if they had sprung up out of the stony earth about the door like some belated, dismal, weedy harvest. In their long, skimpy dresses or meager, frayed overalls, they followed her, staring silently, as she drove up—five of them. And there was no telling how many more there were indoors. “My kids never seem to grow up where they can be of any use,” Doc was often heard to complain. And people didn’t like to remind him that two of them had grown up, because those two had left him and had come to no good. Mrs. Petersen came to the door and received her parcel of stockings, embarrassed and eager. She’d send one of the boys down with the money, she said, looking at Elsa through the door which she held open only a few inches. A child with a red patch under its nose looked out from behind her apron. “Looks like winter’s comin’, eh?” Mrs. Petersen said. It was so nice of Mrs. Bowers to let her have the stockings cheaper. She had so many to buy for, goodness knows, it was like pouring water into a sieve. The child sniffed and stretched its raw, moist nostrils and upper lip downward. The door closed.

At the Magnussons’ and Fletchers’ Elsa stayed a little and talked with the girls of her own age, about things at the school in Elder’s Hollow; about Thanksgiving, next week, and about the new teacher who had come to the Hollow that fall and whose “pincher” glasses the girls had all tried on at the first opportunity. Mrs. Magnusson paid Elsa the money for the stockings and remarked that the rain of the night before would likely be the last before snow. Nora Magnusson had a new dress to show Elsa, a dress of black and white checked wool trimmed with red braid and a red anchor on the sleeve. Pretty, Elsa thought, but it would probably be the only dress thin little Nora would have to wear to church and to school all that winter. The Magnussons lived, people often asked how, on a quarter-section of land not more than half of which yielded any crop at all.

At the Fletcher farm Elsa stayed a little longer, to talk with the girls, Lily and Clarice. She had come to look upon Lily as her “particular” friend at school. The Fletcher girls were both pretty. They “crimped” their hair and went to dances, although they were only a year or two older than Elsa. They walked home from school with boys, too, and they giggled a great deal and had secret signs. One of the Whitney boys had been expelled from the school in Elder’s Hollow for saying something to them which the teacher overheard. He was going to school in Sundower now.

Out on the road again, and the wind blew and the clouds gathered and banked and grayed in long furls low on the horizon. The livid, whitish belly on a cloud—that was snow! The mark of winter had been set upon the sky.

And then to Fanny Ipsmiller’s, or rather to Nels Lundquist’s, although people had begun to say the other, so had Fanny taken hold there. It was Fanny Ipsmiller of whom Elsa’s father and mother always spoke mysteriously and in whispers when they knew Elsa was within hearing. They did so even yet, although Reef had told her, quite bluntly, that Fanny had come to Nels Lundquist through a matrimonial agency, as all the district knew. There was some difference of opinion as to why she had never married Nels, but Fanny herself had been heard to say that while she was willing enough to keep his house in order and to look after his growing boy, she would never marry a man as stingy as she had found Nels Lundquist to be within the very first hour she had spent in his house. Although Elsa had learned to accept the situation with only a little wondering now and then, especially when the older girls spoke of it at school, she felt strangely shy when she got down from her seat and went to the door.

Fanny had ordered a bright yellow scarf from Elsa’s mother. When she saw it she exclaimed: “My sakes, ain’t that the pretty thing, now! It’ll be my Christmas present from Nels, that’s what it’ll be! He don’t know it yet, though.” She laughed heartily, a large laugh that seemed to come from every part of her large, spare frame, and strode capably across the floor to admire herself in the mirror, the scarf about her neck. She was back beside Elsa in a moment, tossing the scarf down upon the kitchen table. “You got the stockin’s for little Nels?” Her eyes, and then her large, active hands, pounced upon the stockings Elsa unwrapped. She thrust a hand into one of them, pulled at the ribs, scrutinized them closely. “She looks at them as if she was hungry,” Elsa thought. Just then “little” Nels came in, dragging his feet, soiling the spotless floor. He was Elsa’s age, given to swearing manfully and throwing stones during recess at school. Elsa had always disliked him with all her heart. “I want somethin’ to eat, I do,” he said, surlily flinging open the cupboard door, closing it without looking in. “Yes, Nelsie, yes, now,” Fanny said hurriedly. “But lookit! Lookit the nice stockin’s Mrs. Bowers made for ye. Warm an’ good an’ thick. Them’ll keep ye warm, Nelsie boy, won’t they?” “I’m hungry, I am!” was his cross response. Fanny smiled indulgently and looked at Elsa. “I’ll go over myself with the money to your ma one day next week,” she said.

Elsa was out upon the road again, the gray of the air flowing low now, into the brown of the earth—a chill gray that flowed through your flesh and blood on down, down, into the flesh and blood of the earth, she thought. She pressed her arms against her ribs; hunched her head down into her coat collar. That was what it meant to live in Elder’s Hollow—you feared the winter. The land was poor between Elder’s Hollow and Sundower, and scarcely any one there had enough bedclothes to keep out the cold, or storm windows without broken panes, or fuel to burn all night long, or warm clothes to go out and tend the cattle in. They had all, that day, remarked upon the coming of winter. They had all tasted the bitter taste of the cold, those people who had opened their doors to her. She was of them, she was of the dwellers in Elder’s Hollow, living with them a small life close to the seasons, feeling rain and drought, heat and cold, wind of high noon and calm of stars. This it was to live in Elder’s Hollow: that you went to bed early in winter to save fuel and light, and that in summer you looked up through the gentle lapping leaves of the pigweed house, up into a dream of blue—up into the Mediterranean Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and the Straits of Magellan.

There was Nate Brazell’s house—shack, people called it. A low building, long and narrow, with tin stovepipes, and covered with tar paper and criss-crossed laths. Elsa feared the place. Her mother had gone in to ask Mrs. Brazell for an order, but the woman, who had protruding eyes because of a throat trouble, had looked at her in a frightening way and said no, she had no money for such. Elsa’s mother had hurried away for fear of meeting Nate Brazell himself or one of his dogs. He owned a good piece of land and young Nels Lundquist had told at school one day that whenever Nate Brazell buried waste after a slaughter a bag of money went down with it, behind his house. Nobody would think of digging there.

Another little bridge, none too safe, crossed the creek which ran through the heart of the Hollow. The lonely squalor of the place rippled Elsa’s flesh with fear and excitement. Here the wind whistled faintly through dead reeds and gnarled stumps, rotted and sour, and here the sharp smell of swamp water moved in the air. This in summer was the odorous haunt of red-winged blackbirds, kingfishers and snipe, and once Elsa and Reef had seen a hawk swerve down like a scythe and snatch up a water rat from the weft of reeds. The light here now was yellow, receding darkly, weirdly, in through the dense growth of the reeds and grotesquely shaped, upturned roots of trees. The water was clear amber, and deep down you could see the soft black earth bottom, cushiony and faintly veined with rotten roots. Now she saw a wild grapevine trailing over a gray, barkless fallen tree-trunk, a few dried grapes still clinging to its stems. And then, with the white flash of an underwing, a water-fowl flew up out of the yellow murk and away.

Out of Elder’s Hollow at last, looking southward upon the fabulous world of the Carews. They too, might say, “It looks like winter,” but they would be thinking of their shining cutter and their black-bear robe with the red-wool lining.

It seemed to her that traces of summer still lingered on Carew land: ghost of fresher grass in this pasture; ghost of sunnier sky in that pond. The bright green roof of the white house, too, surmounting its terraced lawn, was a living thing, knowing no autumn death. She scarcely saw the farm buildings from the approach to the house. The terrace and the fir hedge, and the nursery trees that had grown to a good height about the house, obscured them from view on the north. The people in the district had come to speak of the place as the “Carew Mansion” and the Sundower Clarion referred to it on occasion as “one of the show places of this county.” The house was a bulky structure of white brick, actually rather ugly, Reef had told Elsa. To Elsa it was merely awesome.

She entered the driveway between two rows of young elms that were in the days to come to make a plumy, arched vista, deep with shade, between the house and the road. Then she got down from her seat and walked up the terrace and across the lawn where a few brown leaves drifted, and where she felt the strangeness of a little fountain and a pool beneath it with pink shells and bright stones at the bottom, and the awe of a canvas-canopied garden swing with the delicate scratching of a dry oak leaf across the forsaken seat.

The great brass knocker, shaped like a monk’s head, was for one purpose, she knew. Reef had told her about that, too. She stood at the door, squeezing the box of woolen stockings under her arm while the echoes of the knocker thundered within, on and on, it seemed, like great growing waves of sound. Ada, the youngest of Seth Carew’s children, a girl of Elsa’s own age, came to the door, stared for a moment, then with her slow, shallow smile asked Elsa to come in.

Elsa followed her into the dreamlike living-room of the house where the women of the family were having tea beside an open fire. The farmers about Sundower rarely spoke of the Carew women without mentioning the fact that they always drank tea in the late afternoon, a function that—to them, at least—had small place in the lives of serious women, especially women who lived on a farm. Miss Hildreth had reminded one of them who dared to mention it in her presence that the Carews were really English, only a generation or two removed, and if that was not a sufficient excuse for the habit it was quite possible for the Carew women to drink tea of an afternoon without having to answer to the rest of the world for it. Elsa, although she had been forewarned, sat on the edge of her chair and was abashed. She explained, haltingly, why she had come, fumbling with stiff fingers at the string that bound her parcel, keeping her face toward Miss Hildreth, in whose sparkling eyes there was always something kindly, however blunt and outspoken she might be in conversation. Not for a moment, however, was Elsa unconscious of the frankly staring eyes of the other three women: Mrs. Peter Carew, the wife of Seth’s brother, Miss Florence, who was to marry Mahlon Breen in January, and Ada. Elsa had never seen them all together before and the effect was overpowering. She could not help wondering what it would be like if one had to live, day in, day out, under the searching eyes of them all. That would be punishment for your worst sin.

Mrs. Peter Carew was the first to speak when Elsa drew forth a pair of stockings and held them up to view. She put a soft hand to her cheek and exclaimed, “Mercy! We’d have no use for such heavy things!” Florence said, “They make my feet tickle to look at them!” Then Ada, with blue eyes lifting and falling from Elsa to the stockings, asked, “Do you wear those, El-sa?”

It was Hildreth who said sharply, delivering the mortal blow, “Hush! Have some consideration for the child! Come, my dear, have a cup of tea to warm you up before you start back home again.”

Elsa laid her parcel aside and accepted the cup which Hildreth gave her. Then, through an intolerable heat that surrounded her, she heard the extraordinary conversation which her coming had unexpectedly provoked. The Carew women had begun to talk about legs. “The Carew women have always had a fine leg,” Hildreth declared. As if to add weight to her words, she stretched her foot upon a red plush hassock that lay on the floor beside her chair. She drew her skirt up discreetly and revealed a bottle-shaped limb with a very small ankle. Florence and Ada eagerly displayed their legs of the same general shapeliness, then all three looked to Mrs. Peter Carew. She lifted her bombazine gores and thrust a neat foot forward. “You have it, Grace!” Hildreth exclaimed in approval. “The Carew leg! I noticed it the first day Peter brought you to the house. I must say, though, I was a little surprised. You haven’t the build that usually goes with a good leg.” Ada pointed to Elsa’s slender limbs, withdrawn under her chair. “Elsa’s don’t go out where they should. Do they, Aunt Hildreth?” Elsa’s cheeks burned, but she thrust her leg out a little to one side to show that she didn’t care.

When she got up to go, finally, Elsa felt that she had never before spent a half hour in such utter discomfort. To make matters worse, when she got outside she discovered that she had left her package of stockings there in the warm, richly shadowed living-room, and had to go back and ask for them, striking the door once more with the appalling monk’s head.

It was when she was getting into her seat in the democrat that she saw Bayliss Carew, riding down the avenue of young elms, on a horse like Peter Carew’s, riding as Peter rode. She felt shy; hurried. Bayliss was nineteen now, one of the grown-ups, really. He had stretched out in the past year and didn’t resemble a raspberry any more, Elsa thought, although his cheeks were still tinged with red, as all the Carews’ were. He drew up and took off his cap to her. There was something in the gesture that she could not help resent. Why should he take off his cap at all? Reef or Leon wouldn’t.

“Hello, Elsa Bowers!” he said quickly. “What’s brought you so far from home on a cold day? Had any word from Reef lately?”

“Last week,” Elsa replied. “He’s all right, I guess. He says he’s coming home for Christmas.”

“That’s good. I’d like to see him. I’ll be going to college myself next year. They want to make a doctor out of me. How d’you like my new horse? Aunt Hildreth gave him to me for my birthday. Full-blooded. I’m going to race him in the spring, if they’ll let me. Watch him rear!”

He tightened the rein sharply and the animal rose on its hind legs, weaving and dancing. Elsa watched horse and rider for a moment, scarcely knowing whether she admired the picture they made or resented it more. The horse was beautiful. An animal like that would make Reef or Leon proud to the end of their days. But in Bayliss’ handling of him there was sheer arrogance. The horse waltzed from side to side on his slender legs until Bayliss, with a sudden jerk of the rein, brought him about so that he stood with his head close to Elsa. From his seat in the saddle, Bayliss then smiled down at her, drawing the rein taut to give a sharper arch to the horse’s sleek neck. Elsa’s eyes caught sight of blood on the bit.

“Don’t do that!” she said quickly. “You’re hurting his mouth. I can see blood on it now.”

For answer Bayliss continued to smile down at her as he drew the rein still tighter. In a moment Elsa’s anger flamed. She had sat for nearly an hour among the Carew women in the house, where she had writhed helplessly in her resentment for the whole crowd of them. Now Bayliss sat there with a devilish challenge in his eyes. She remembered suddenly the time he had slyly pinched her bare foot under the table when he knew she dared do no more than whimper a little. Now, they were alone in the open, with none of his women present to subdue her with a look. Putting out her hand she seized the bridle-rein just where it joined the ring in the bit. With her other hand she snatched her whip from its place on the dashboard of the democrat.

“Bayliss Carew,” she said, “I told you not to do that. Let go!”

As she spoke she swung her whip out ready to use it if he did not obey her. Smiling still, Bayliss shook the rein loose.

“All right, Elsa Spitfire. You’d think he was your horse. Let him go. I’ll be good. I guess it did hurt him a little, at that.”

But Elsa, with a sense of some new humiliation, had already released her hold upon the bridle and was in her seat with the lines in her hand. As she turned down the narrow avenue of elms, Bayliss waved his cap and smiled. Elsa, glancing back at him, could not help knowing that he looked as handsome and strange then as his uncle, Peter Carew. As though he had been smiling, not really at you, but through you, at something wonderful he had seen beyond. As she reached the road, the horse that Bayliss was riding curved and trotted back up the aisle of young elms, the boy sitting very straight with the fine naked branches etched above him on the sky—and the sky was the color of smoke and ochre from the setting of the sun.