Poor White: A Novel Page 13

  CHAPTER XIII

  Hugh first saw Clara Butterworth one day in July when she had beenat home for a month. She came to his shop late one afternoon withher father and a man who had been employed to manage the new bicyclefactory. The three got out of Tom's buggy and came into the shop to seeHugh's new invention, the hay-loading apparatus. Tom and the man namedAlfred Buckley went to the rear of the shop, and Hugh was left alonewith the woman. She was dressed in a light summer gown and her cheekswere flushed. Hugh stood by a bench near an open window and listenedwhile she talked of how much the town had changed in the three years shehad been away. "It is your doing, every one says that," she declared.

  Clara had been waiting for an opportunity to talk to Hugh. She beganasking questions regarding his work and what was to come of it. "Wheneverything is done by machines, what are people to do?" she asked. Sheseemed to take it for granted that the inventor had thought deeplyon the subject of industrial development, a subject on which KateChanceller had often talked during a whole evening. Having heard Hughspoken of as one who had a great brain, she wanted to see the brain atwork.

  Alfred Buckley came often to her father's house and wanted to marryClara. In the evening the two men sat on the front porch of thefarmhouse and talked of the town and the big things that were to be donethere. They spoke of Hugh, and Buckley, an energetic, talkative fellowwith a long jaw and restless gray eyes who had come from New York City,suggested schemes for using him. Clara gathered that there was a planon foot to get control of Hugh's future inventions and thereby gain anadvantage over Steve Hunter.

  The whole matter puzzled Clara. Alfred Buckley had asked her to marryhim and she had put the matter off. The proposal had been a formalthing, not at all what she had expected from a man she was to take as apartner for life, but Clara was at the moment very seriously determinedupon marriage. The New York man was at her father's house severalevenings every week. She had never walked about with him nor had they inany way come close to each other. He seemed too much occupied with workto be personal and had proposed marriage by writing her a letter. Claragot the letter from the post-office and it upset her so that she feltshe could not for a time go into the presence of any one she knew. "I amunworthy of you, but I want you to be my wife. I will work for you. I amnew here and you do not know me very well. All I ask is the privilege ofproving my merit. I want you to be my wife, but before I dare come andask you to do me so great an honor I feel I must prove myself worthy,"the letter said.

  Clara had driven into town alone on the day when she received it andlater got into her buggy and drove south past the Butterworth farm intothe hills. She forgot to go home to lunch or to the evening meal. Thehorse jogged slowly along, protesting and trying to turn back at everycross road, but she kept on and did not get home until midnight. Whenshe reached the farmhouse her father was waiting. He went with her intothe barnyard and helped unhitch the horse. Nothing was said, and aftera moment's conversation having nothing to do with the subject thatoccupied both their minds, she went upstairs and tried to think thematter out. She became convinced that her father had something to dowith the proposal of marriage that he knew about it and had waited forher to come home in order to see how it had affected her.

  Clara wrote a reply that was as non-committal as the proposal itself."I do not know whether I want to marry you or not. I will have to becomeacquainted with you. I however thank you for the offer of marriage andwhen you feel that the right time has come, we will talk about it," shewrote.

  After the exchange of letters, Alfred Buckley came to her father'shouse more often than before, but he and Clara did not become betteracquainted. He did not talk to her, but to her father. Although shedid not know it, the rumor that she was to marry the New York man hadalready run about town. She did not know whether her father or Buckleyhad told the tale.

  On the front porch of the farmhouse through the summer evenings the twomen talked of the progress, of the town and the part they were takingand hoped to take in its future growth. The New York man had proposeda scheme to Tom. He was to go to Hugh and propose a contract giving thetwo men an option on all his future inventions. As the inventions werecompleted they were to be financed in New York City, and the two menwould give up manufacture and make money much more rapidly as promoters.They hesitated because they were afraid of Steve Hunter, and because Tomwas afraid Hugh would not fall in with their plan. "It wouldn't surpriseme if Steve already had such a contract with him. He's a fool if hehasn't," the older man said.

  Evening after evening the two men talked and Clara sat in the deepshadows at the back of the porch and listened. The enmity that hadexisted between herself and her father seemed to be forgotten. The manwho had asked her to marry him did not look at her, but her father did.Buckley did most of the talking and spoke of New York City businessmen, already famous throughout the Middle West as giants of finance, asthough they were his life-long friends. "They'll put over anything I askthem to," he declared.

  Clara tried to think of Alfred Buckley as a husband. Like Hugh McVeyhe was tall and gaunt but unlike the inventor, whom she had seen twoor three times on the street, he was not carelessly dressed. There wassomething sleek about him, something that suggested a well-bred dog,a hound perhaps. As he talked he leaned forward like a greyhound inpursuit of a rabbit. His hair was carefully parted and his clothesfitted him like the skin of an animal. He wore a diamond scarf pin. Hislong jaw, it seemed to her, was always wagging. Within a few days afterthe receipt of his letter she had made up her mind that she did not wanthim as a husband, and she was convinced he did not want her. The wholematter of marriage had, she was sure, been in some way suggested by herfather. When she came to that conclusion she was both angry and inan odd way touched. She did not interpret it as fear of some sort ofindiscretion on her part, but thought that her father wanted her tomarry because he wanted her to be happy. As she sat in the darknesson the front porch of the farmhouse the voices of the two men becameindistinct. It was as though her mind went out of her body and like aliving thing journeyed over the world. Dozens of men she had seen andhad casually addressed, young fellows attending school at Columbus andboys of the town with whom she had gone to parties and dances whenshe was a young girl, came to stand before her. She saw their figuresdistinctly, but remembered them at some advantageous moment of hercontact with them. At Columbus there was a young man from a town in thesouthern end of the State, one of the sort that is always in love witha woman. During her first year in school he had noticed Clara, hadbeen undecided as to whether he had better pay attention to her or to alittle black-eyed town girl who was in their classes. Several times hewalked down the college hill and along the street with Clara. The twostood at a street crossing where she was in the habit of taking a car.Several cars went by as they stood together by a bush that grew by ahigh stone wall. They talked of trivial matters, a comedy club that hadbeen organized in the school, the chances of victory for the footballteam. The young man was one of the actors in a play to be given bythe comedy club and told Clara of his experiences at rehearsals. As hetalked his eyes began to shine and he seemed to be looking, not ather face or body, but at something within her. For a time, perhaps forfifteen minutes, there was a possibility that the two people would loveeach other. Then the young man went away and later she saw him walkingunder the trees on the college campus with the little black-eyed towngirl.

  As she sat on the porch in the darkness in the summer evenings, Clarathought of the incident and of dozens of other swift-passing contactsshe had made with men. The voices of the two men talking of money-makingwent on and on. Whenever she came back out of her introspective world ofthought, Alfred Buckley's long jaw was wagging. He was always at work,steadily, persistently urging something on her father. It was difficultfor Clara to think of her father as a rabbit, but the notion that AlfredBuckley was like a hound stayed with her. "The wolf and the wolfhound,"she thought absent-mindedly.

  Clara was twenty-three and seemed to herself mature. She did notintend was
ting any more time going to school and did not want to be aprofessional woman, like Kate Chanceller. There was something she didwant and in a way some man, she did not know what man it would be, wasconcerned in the matter. She was very hungry for love, but might havegot that from another woman. Kate Chanceller would have loved her. Shewas not unconscious of the fact that their friendship had been somethingmore than friendship. Kate loved to hold Clara's hand and wanted to kissand caress her. The inclination had been put down by Kate herself, astruggle had gone on in her, and Clara had been dimly conscious of itand had respected Kate for making it.

  Why? Clara asked herself that question a dozen times during the earlyweeks of that summer. Kate Chanceller had taught her to think. Whenthey were together Kate did both the thinking and the talking, but nowClara's mind had a chance. There was something back of her desire fora man. She wanted something more than caresses. There was a creativeimpulse in her that could not function until she had been made love toby a man. The man she wanted was but an instrument she sought in orderthat she might fulfill herself. Several times during those evenings inthe presence of the two men, who talked only of making money out of theproducts of another man's mind, she almost forced her mind out into aconcrete thought concerning women, and then it became again befogged.

  Clara grew tired of thinking, and listened to the talk. The name ofHugh McVey played through the persistent conversation like a refrain.It became fixed in her mind. The inventor was not married. By the socialsystem under which she lived that and that only made him a possibilityfor her purposes. She began to think of the inventor, and her mind,weary of playing about her own figure, played about the figure of thetall, serious-looking man she had seen on Main Street. When AlfredBuckley had driven away to town for the night, she went upstairs to herown room but did not get into bed. Instead, she put out her light andsat by an open window that looked out upon the orchard and from whichshe could see a little stretch of the road that ran past the farm housetoward town. Every evening before Alfred Buckley went away, there wasa little scene on the front porch. When the visitor got up to go, herfather made some excuse for going indoors or around the corner of thehouse into the barnyard. "I will have Jim Priest hitch up your horse,"he said and hurried away. Clara was left in the company of the man whohad pretended he wanted to marry her, and who, she was convinced,wanted nothing of the kind. She was not embarrassed, but could feel hisembarrassment and enjoyed it. He made formal speeches.

  "Well, the night is fine," he said. Clara hugged the thought that he wasuncomfortable. "He has taken me for a green country girl, impressedwith him because he is from the city and dressed in fine clothes," shethought. Sometimes her father stayed away five or ten minutes and shedid not say a word. When her father returned Alfred Buckley shook handswith him and then turned to Clara, apparently now quite at his ease. "Wehave bored you, I'm afraid," he said. He took her hand and leaning over,kissed the back of it ceremoniously. Her father looked away. Clara wentupstairs and sat by the window. She could hear the two men continuingtheir talk in the road before the house. After a time the front doorbanged, her father came into the house and the visitor drove away.Everything became quiet and for a long time she could hear the hoofs ofAlfred Buckley's horse beating a rapid tattoo on the road that led downinto town.

  Clara thought of Hugh McVey. Alfred Buckley had spoken of him as abackwoodsman with a streak of genius. He constantly harped on the notionthat he and Tom could use the man for their own ends, and she wonderedif both of the men were making as great a mistake about the inventor asthey were about her. In the silent summer night, when the sound of thehorse's hoofs had died away and when her father had quit stirring aboutthe house, she heard another sound. The corn-cutting machine factorywas very busy and had put on a night shift. When the night was still, orwhen there was a slight breeze blowing up the hill from town, therewas a low rumbling sound coming from many machines working in wood andsteel, followed at regular intervals by the steady breathing of a steamengine.

  The woman at the window, like every one else in her town and in all thetowns of the mid-western country, became touched with the idea of theromance of industry. The dreams of the Missouri boy that he had fought,had by the strength of his persistency twisted into new channels sothat they had expressed themselves in definite things, in corn-cuttingmachines and in machines for unloading coal cars and for gathering hayout of a field and loading it on wagons without aid of human hands, werestill dreams and capable of arousing dreams in others. They awoke dreamsin the mind of the woman. The figures of other men that had been playingthrough her mind slipped away and but the one figure remained. Her mindmade up stories concerning Hugh. She had read the absurd tale that hadbeen printed in the Cleveland paper and her fancy took hold of it. Likeevery other citizen of America she believed in heroes. In books andmagazines she had read of heroic men who had come up out of povertyby some strange alchemy to combine in their stout persons all of thevirtues. The broad, rich land demanded gigantic figures, and the mindsof men had created the figures. Lincoln, Grant, Garfield, Sherman, and ahalf dozen other men were something more than human in the minds ofthe generation that came immediately after the days of their stirringperformance. Already industry was creating a new set of semi-mythicalfigures. The factory at work in the night-time in the town of Bidwellbecame, to the mind of the woman sitting by the window in the farmhouse, not a factory but a powerful animal, a powerful beast-like thingthat Hugh had tamed and made useful to his fellows. Her mind ranforward and took the taming of the beast for granted. The hunger of hergeneration found a voice in her. Like every one else she wanted heroes,and Hugh, to whom she had never talked and about whom she knew nothing,became a hero. Her father, Alfred Buckley, Steve Hunter and the restwere after all pigmies. Her father was a schemer; he had even schemedto get her married, perhaps to further his own plans. In reality hisschemes were so ineffective that she did not need to be angry with him.There was but one man of them all who was not a schemer. Hugh was whatshe wanted to be. He was a creative force. In his hands dead inanimatethings became creative forces. He was what she wanted not herselfbut perhaps a son, to be. The thought, at last definitely expressed,startled Clara, and she arose from the chair by the window and preparedto go to bed. Something within her body ached, but she did not allowherself to pursue further the thoughts she had been having.

  On the day when she went with her father and Alfred Buckley to visitHugh's shop, Clara knew that she wanted to marry the man she would seethere. The thought was not expressed in her but slept like a seed newlyplanted in fertile soil. She had herself managed that she be taken tothe factory and had also managed that she be left with Hugh while thetwo men went to look at the half-completed hay-loader at the back of theshop.

  She had begun talking to Hugh while the four people stood on the littlegrass plot before the shop. They went inside and her father and Buckleywent through a door toward the rear. She stopped by a bench and as shecontinued talking Hugh was compelled to stop and stand beside her. Sheasked questions, paid him vague compliments, and as he struggled, tryingto make conversation, she studied him. To cover his confusion he halfturned away and looked out through a window into Turner's Pike. Hiseyes, she decided, were nice. They were somewhat small, but there wassomething gray and cloudy in them, and the gray cloudiness gave herconfidence in the person behind the eyes. She could, she felt, trusthim. There was something in his eyes that was like the things mostgrateful to her own nature, the sky seen across an open stretch ofcountry or over a river that ran straight away into the distance. Hugh'shair was coarse like the mane of a horse, and his nose was like the noseof a horse. He was, she decided, very like a horse; an honest, powerfulhorse, a horse that was humanized by the mysterious, hungering thingthat expressed itself through his eyes. "If I have to live with ananimal; if, as Kate Chanceller once said, we women have to decide whatother animal we are to live with before we can begin being humans,I would rather live with a strong, kindly horse than a wolf or awolfhound," she found hersel
f thinking.