Poor White: A Novel Read online

  CHAPTER XIV

  Hugh had no suspicion that Clara had him under consideration as apossible husband. He knew nothing about her, but after she went away hebegan to think. She was a woman and good to look upon and at once tookRose McCoy's place in his mind. All unloved men and many who are lovedplay in a half subconscious way with the figures of many women aswomen's minds play with the figures of men, seeing them in manysituations, vaguely caressing them, dreaming of closer contacts. WithHugh the impulse toward women had started late, but it was becomingevery day more active. When he talked to Clara and while she stayedin his presence, he was more embarrassed than he had ever been before,because he was more conscious of her than he had ever been of any otherwoman. In secret he was not the modest man he thought himself. Thesuccess of his corn-cutting machine and his car-dumping apparatus andthe respect, amounting almost to worship, he sometimes saw in the eyesof the people of the Ohio town had fed his vanity. It was a time whenall America was obsessed with one idea, and to the people of Bidwellnothing could be more important, necessary and vital to progress thanthe things Hugh had done. He did not walk and talk like the other peopleof the town, and his body was over-large and loosely put together, butin secret he did not want to be different even in a physical way. Nowand then there came an opportunity for a test of physical strength: aniron bar was to be lifted or a part of some heavy machine swung intoplace in the shop. In such a test he had found he could lift almosttwice the load another could handle. Two men grunted and strained,trying to lift a heavy bar off the floor and put it on a bench. He camealong and did the job alone and without apparent effort.

  In his room at night or in the late afternoon or evening in the summerwhen he walked on country roads, he sometimes felt keen hunger forrecognition of his merits from his fellows, and having no one to praisehim, he praised himself. When the Governor of the State spoke in praiseof him before a crowd and when he made Rose McCoy come away because itseemed immodest for him to stay and hear such words, he found himselfunable to sleep. After tossing in his bed for two or three hours he gotup and crept quietly out of the house. He was like a man who, havingan unmusical voice, sings to himself in a bath-room while the wateris making a loud, splashing noise. On that night Hugh wanted to be anorator. As he stumbled in the darkness along Turner's Pike he imaginedhimself Governor of a State addressing a multitude of people. A milenorth of Pickleville a dense thicket grew beside the road, and Hughstopped and addressed the young trees and bushes. In the darknessthe mass of bushes looked not unlike a crowd standing at attention,listening. The wind blew and played in the thick, dry growth and therewas a sound as of many voices whispering words of encouragement. Hughsaid many foolish things. Expressions he had heard from the lips ofSteve Hunter and Tom Butterworth came into his mind and were repeatedby his lips. He spoke of the swift growth that had come to the town ofBidwell as though it were an unmixed blessing, the factories, the homesof happy, contented people, the coming of industrial development assomething akin to a visit of the gods. Rising to the height of egotismhe shouted, "I have done it. I have done it."

  Hugh heard a buggy coming along the road and fled into the thicket. Afarmer, who had gone to town for the evening and who had stayed afterthe political meeting to talk with other farmers in Ben Head's saloon,went homeward, asleep in his buggy. His head nodded up and down, heavywith the vapors rising from many glasses of beer. Hugh came out of thethicket feeling somewhat ashamed. The next day he wrote a letter toSarah Shepherd and told her of his progress. "If you or Henry want anymoney, I can let you have all you want," he wrote, and did not resistthe temptation to tell her something of what the Governor had said ofhis work and his mind. "Anyway they must think I amount to somethingwhether I do or not," he said wistfully.

  Having awakened to his own importance in the life about him, Hugh wanteddirect, human appreciation. After the failure of the effort both he andRose had made to break through the wall of embarrassment and reservethat kept them apart, he knew pretty definitely that he wanted a woman,and the idea, once fixed in his mind, grew to gigantic proportions. Allwomen became interesting, and he looked with hungry eyes at the wivesof the workmen who sometimes came to the shop door to pass a word withtheir husbands, at young farm girls who drove along Turner's Pike onsummer afternoons, town girls who walked in the Bidwell Main Street inthe evening, at fair women and dark women. As he wanted a woman moreconsciously and determinedly he became more afraid of individual women.His success and his association with the workmen in his shop had madehim less self-conscious in the presence of men, but the women weredifferent. In their presence he was ashamed of his secret thoughts ofthem.

  On the day when he was left alone with Clara, Tom Butterworth and AlfredBuckley stayed at the back of the shop for nearly twenty minutes. Itwas a hot day and beads of sweat stood on Hugh's face. His sleeves wererolled to his elbows and his hands and hairy arms were covered with shopgrime. He put up his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead, leavinga long, black mark. Then he became aware of the fact that as she talkedthe woman looked at him in an absorbed, almost calculating way. It wasas though he were a horse and she were a buyer examining him to be surehe was sound and of a kindly disposition. While she stood beside him hereyes were shining and her cheeks were flushed. The awakening, assertivemale thing in him whispered that the flush on her cheeks and the shiningeyes were indicative of something. His mind had been taught that lessonby the slight and wholly unsatisfactory experience with the schoolteacher at his boarding-house.

  Clara drove away from the shop with her father and Alfred Buckley. Tomdrove and Alfred Buckley leaned forward and talked. "You must find outwhether or not Steve has an option on the new tool. It would be foolishto ask outright and give ourselves away. That inventor is stupid andvain. Those fellows always are. They appear to be quiet and shrewd, butthey always let the cat out of the bag. The thing to do is to flatterhim in some way. A woman could find out all he knows in ten minutes." Heturned to Clara and smiled. There was something infinitely impertinentin the fixed, animal-like stare of his eyes. "We do take you into ourplans, your father and me, eh?" he said. "You must be careful not togive us away when you talk to that inventor."

  From his shop window Hugh stared at the backs of the heads of the threepeople. The top of Tom Butterworth's buggy had been let down, and whenhe talked Alfred Buckley leaned forward and his head disappeared. Hughthought Clara must look like the kind of woman men meant when they spokeof a lady. The farmer's daughter had an instinct for clothes, and Hugh'smind got the idea of gentility by way of the medium of clothes. Hethought the dress she had worn the most stylish thing he had ever seen.Clara's friend Kate Chanceller, while mannish in her dress, had aninstinct for style and had taught Clara some valuable lessons. "Anywoman can dress well if she knows how," Kate had declared. She hadtaught Clara how to study and emphasize by dress the good points of herbody. Beside Clara, Rose McCoy looked dowdy and commonplace.

  Hugh went to the rear of his shop to where there was a water-tap andwashed his hands. Then he went to a bench and tried to take up the workhe had been doing. Within five minutes he went to wash his hands again.He went out of the shop and stood beside the small stream that rippledalong beneath willow bushes and disappeared under the bridge beneathTurner's Pike, and then went back for his coat and quit work for theday. An instinct led him to go past the creek again and he knelt on thegrass at the edge and again washed his hands.

  Hugh's growing vanity was fed by the thought that Clara was interestedin him, but it was not yet strong enough to sustain the thought. He tooka long walk, going north from the shop along Turner's Pike for two orthree miles and then by a cross road between corn and cabbage fields towhere he could, by crossing a meadow, get into a wood. For an hour hesat on a log at the wood's edge and looked south. Away in the distance,over the roofs of the houses of the town, he could see a white speckagainst a background of green--the Butterworth farm house. Almost atonce he decided that the thing he had seen in Clara's eyes and that wassister to so
mething he had seen in Rose McCoy's eyes had nothing to dowith him. The mantle of vanity he had been wearing dropped off and lefthim naked and sad. "What would she be wanting of me?" he asked himself,and got up from the log to look with critical eyes at his long, bonybody. For the first time in two or three years he thought of the wordsso often repeated in his presence by Sarah Shepard in the first fewmonths after he left his father's shack by the shore of the MississippiRiver and came to work at the railroad station. She had called hispeople lazy louts and poor white trash and had railed against hisinclination to dreams. By struggle and work he had conquered the dreamsbut could not conquer his ancestry, nor change the fact that he was atbottom poor white trash. With a shudder of disgust he saw himself againa boy in ragged clothes that smelled of fish, lying stupid and halfasleep in the grass beside the Mississippi River. He forgot the majestyof the dreams that sometimes came to him, and only remembered the swarmsof flies that, attracted by the filth of their clothes, hovered over himand over the drunken father who lay sleeping beside him.

  A lump arose in his throat and for a moment he was consumed withself-pity. Then he went out of the wood, crossed the field, and withhis peculiar, long, shambling gait that got him over the ground withsurprising rapidity, went again along the road. Had there been a streamnearby he would have been tempted to tear off his clothes and plungein. The notion that he could ever become a man who would in any way beattractive to a woman like Clara Butterworth seemed the greatest follyin the world. "She's a lady. What would she be wanting of me? I ain'tfitten for her. I ain't fitten for her," he said aloud, unconsciouslyfalling into the dialect of his father.

  Hugh walked the entire afternoon away and in the evening went back tohis shop and worked until midnight. So energetically did he work thatseveral knotty problems in the construction of the hay-loading apparatuswere cleared away.

  On the second evening after the encounter with Clara, Hugh went for awalk in the streets of Bidwell. He thought of the work on which he hadbeen engaged all day and then of the woman he had made up his mind hecould under no circumstances win. As darkness came on he went intothe country, and at nine returned along the railroad tracks past thecorn-cutter factory. The factory was working day and night, and the newplant, also beside the tracks and but a short distance away, was almostcompleted. Behind the new plant was a field Tom Butterworth and SteveHunter had bought and laid out in streets of workingmen's houses. Thehouses were cheaply constructed and ugly, and in all directions therewas a vast disorder; but Hugh did not see the disorder or the uglinessof the buildings. The sight that lay before him strengthened his waningvanity. Something of the loose shuffle went out of his stride and hethrew back his shoulders. "What I have done here amounts to something.I'm all right," he thought, and had almost reached the old corn-cutterplant when several men came out of a side door and getting upon thetracks, walked before him.

  In the corn-cutter plant something had happened that excited the men.Ed Hall the superintendent had played a trick on his fellow townsmen. Hehad put on overalls and gone to work at a bench in a long room with somefifty other men. "I'm going to show you up," he said, laughing. "Youwatch me. We're behind on the work and I'm going to show you up."

  The pride of the workmen had been touched, and for two weeks they hadworked like demons to outdo the boss. At night when the amount ofwork done was calculated, they laughed at Ed. Then they heard that thepiece-work plan was to be installed in the factory, and were afraid theywould be paid by a scale calculated on the amount of work done duringthe two weeks of furious effort.

  The workman who stumbled along the tracks cursed Ed Hall and the men forwhom he worked. "I lost six hundred dollars in the plant-setting machinefailure and this is all I get, to be played a trick on by a young sucklike Ed Hall," a voice grumbled. Another voice took up the refrain.In the dim light Hugh could see the speaker, a man with a bent back, aproduct of the cabbage fields, who had come to town to find employment.Although he did not recognize it, he had heard the voice before. It camefrom a son of the cabbage farmer, Ezra French and was the same voice hehad once heard complaining at night as the French boys crawled across acabbage field in the moonlight. The man now said something that startledHugh. "Well," he declared, "it's a joke on me. I quit Dad and made himsore; now he won't take me back again. He says I'm a quitter and nogood. I thought I'd come to town to a factory and find it easier here.Now I've got married and have to stick to my job no matter what theydo. In the country I worked like a dog a few weeks a year, but here I'llprobably have to work like that all the time. It's the way things go. Ithought it was mighty funny, all this talk about the factory work beingso easy. I wish the old days were back. I don't see how that inventor orhis inventions ever helped us workers. Dad was right about him. He saidan inventor wouldn't do nothing for workers. He said it would be betterto tar and feather that telegraph operator. I guess Dad was right."

  The swagger went out of Hugh's walk and he stopped to let the men passout of sight and hearing along the track. When they had gone a littleaway a quarrel broke out. Each man felt the others must be in some wayresponsible for his betrayal in the matter of the contest with Ed Halland accusations flew back and forth. One of the men threw a heavy stonethat ran down along the tracks and jumped into a ditch filled withdry weeds. It made a heavy crashing sound. Hugh heard heavy footstepsrunning. He was afraid the men were going to attack him, and climbedover a fence, crossed a barnyard, and got into an empty street. As hewent along trying to understand what had happened and why the men wereangry, he met Clara Butterworth, standing and apparently waiting for himunder a street lamp.

  * * * * *

  Hugh walked beside Clara, too perplexed to attempt to understand the newimpulses crowding in upon his mind. She explained her presence in thestreet by saying she had been to town to mail a letter and intendedwalking home by a side road. "You may come with me if you're justout for a walk," she said. The two walked in silence. Hugh's mind,unaccustomed to traveling in wide circles, centered on his companion.Life seemed suddenly to be crowding him along strange roads. In twodays he had felt more new emotions and had felt them more deeply than hewould have thought possible to a human being. The hour through whichhe had just passed had been extraordinary. He had started out from hisboarding-house sad and depressed. Then he had come by the factories andpride in what he thought he had accomplished swept in on him. Now itwas apparent the workers in the factories were not happy, that there wassomething the matter. He wondered if Clara would know what was wrongand would tell him if he asked. He wanted to ask many questions. "That'swhat I want a woman for. I want some one close to me who understandsthings and will tell me about them," he thought. Clara remained silentand Hugh decided that she, like the complaining workman stumbling alongthe tracks, did not like him. The man had said he wished Hugh had nevercome to town. Perhaps every one in Bidwell secretly felt that way.

  Hugh was no longer proud of himself and his achievements. Perplexity hadcaptured him. When he and Clara got out of town into a country road, hebegan thinking of Sarah Shepard, who had been friendly and kind to himwhen he was a lad, and wished she were with him, or better yet thatClara would take the attitude toward him she had taken. Had Clara takenit into her head to scold as Sarah Shepard had done he would have beenrelieved.

  Instead Clara walked in silence, thinking of her own affairs andplanning to use Hugh for her own ends. It had been a perplexing dayfor her. Late that afternoon there had been a scene between her andher father and she had left home and come to town because she could nolonger bear being in his presence. When she had seen Hugh coming towardher she had stopped under a street lamp to wait for him. "I could seteverything straight by getting him to ask me to marry him," she thought.

  The new difficulty that had arisen between Clara and her father wassomething with which she had nothing to do. Tom, who thought himself soshrewd and crafty, had been taken in by the city man, Alfred Buckley. Afederal officer had come to town during the afternoon to arr
est Buckley.The man had turned out to be a notorious swindler wanted in severalcities. In New York he had been one of a gang who distributedcounterfeit money, and in other states he was wanted for swindlingwomen, two of whom he married unlawfully.

  The arrest had been like a shot fired at Tom by a member of his ownhousehold. He had almost come to think of Alfred Buckley as one of hisfamily, and as he drove rapidly along the road toward home, he had beenprofoundly sorry for his daughter and had intended to ask her to forgivehim for his part in betraying her into a false position. That he hadnot openly committed himself to any of Buckley's schemes, had signed nopapers and written no letters that would betray the conspiracy he hadentered into against Steve, filled him with joy. He had intended to begenerous, and even, if necessary, confess to Clara his indiscretion intalking of a possible marriage, but when he got to the farm house andhad taken Clara into the parlor and had closed the door, he changedhis mind. He told her of Buckley's arrest, and then started trampingexcitedly up and down in the room. Her coolness infuriated him. "Don'tset there like a clam!" he shouted. "Don't you know what's happened?Don't you know you're disgraced, have brought disgrace on my name?"

  The angry father explained that half the town knew of her engagement tomarry Alfred Buckley, and when Clara declared they were not engaged andthat she had never intended marrying the man, his anger did not abate.He had himself whispered the suggestion about town, had told SteveHunter, Gordon Hart, and two or three others, that Alfred Buckley andhis daughter would no doubt do what he spoke of as "hitting it off," andthey had of course told their wives. The fact that he had betrayed hisdaughter into an ugly position gnawed at his consciousness. "I supposethe rascal told it himself," he said, in reply to her statement, andagain gave way to anger. He glared at his daughter and wished she werea son so he could strike with his fists. His voice arose to a shout andcould be heard in the barnyard where Jim Priest and a young farmhand were at work. They stopped work and listened. "She's been up tosomething. Do you suppose some man has got her in trouble?" the youngfarm hand asked.

  In the house Tom expressed his old dissatisfaction with his daughter."Why haven't you married and settled down like a decent woman?" heshouted. "Tell me that. Why haven't you married and settled down? Whyare you always getting in trouble? Why haven't you married and settleddown?"

  * * * * *

  Clara walked in the road beside Hugh and thought that all her troubleswould come to an end if he would ask her to be his wife. Then shebecame ashamed of her thoughts. As they passed the last street lamp andprepared to set out by a roundabout way along a dark road, she turnedto look at Hugh's long, serious face. The tradition that had made himappear different from other men in the eyes of the people of Bidwellbegan to affect her. Ever since she had come home she had been hearingpeople speak of him with something like awe in their voices. For her tomarry the town's hero would, she knew, set her on a high place in theeyes of her people. It would be a triumph for her and would re-establishher, not only in her father's eyes but in the eyes of every one. Everyone seemed to think she should marry; even Jim Priest had said so. Hehad said she was the marrying kind. Here was her chance. She wonderedwhy she did not want to take it.

  Clara had written her friend Kate Chanceller a letter in which she haddeclared her intention of leaving home and going to work, and had cometo town afoot to mail it. On Main Street as she went through the crowdsof men who had come to loaf the evening away before the stores, theforce of what her father had said concerning the connection of her namewith that of Buckley the swindler had struck her for the first time. Themen were gathered together in groups, talking excitedly. No doubt theywere discussing Buckley's arrest. Her own name was, no doubt, beingbandied about. Her cheeks burned and a keen hatred of mankind hadpossession of her. Now her hatred of others awoke in her an almostworshipful attitude toward Hugh. By the time they had walked togetherfor five minutes all thought of using him to her own ends had gone."He's not like Father or Henderson Woodburn or Alfred Buckley," she toldherself. "He doesn't scheme and twist things about trying to get thebest of some one else. He works, and because of his efforts things areaccomplished." The figure of the farm hand Jim Priest working in a fieldof corn came to her mind. "The farm hand works," she thought, "and thecorn grows. This man sticks to his task in his shop and makes a towngrow."

  In her father's presence during the afternoon Clara had remained calmand apparently indifferent to his tirade. In town in the presence of themen she was sure were attacking her character, she had been angry, readyto fight. Now she wanted to put her head on Hugh's shoulder and cry.

  They came to the bridge near where the road turned and led to herfather's house. It was the same bridge to which she had come with theschool teacher and to which John May had followed, looking for a fight.Clara stopped. She did not want any one at the house to know that Hughhad walked home with her. "Father is so set on my getting married, hewould go to see him to-morrow," she thought. She put her arms upon therail of the bridge and bending over buried her face between them. Hughstood behind her, turning his head from side to side and rubbing hishands on his trouser legs, beside himself with embarrassment. There wasa flat, swampy field beside the road and not far from the bridge, andafter a moment of silence the voices of a multitude of frogs broke thestillness. Hugh became overwhelmingly sad. The notion that he was a bigman and deserved to have a woman to live with and understand him wententirely away. For the moment he wanted to be a boy and put his head onthe shoulder of the woman. He did not look at Clara but at himself.In the dim light his hands, nervously fumbling about, his long,loosely-put-together body, everything connected with his person, seemedugly and altogether unattractive. He could see the woman's small firmhands that lay on the railing of the bridge. They were, he thought, likeeverything connected with her person, shapely and beautiful, just aseverything connected with his own person was unshapely and ugly.

  Clara aroused herself from the meditative mood that had taken possessionof her, and after shaking Hugh's hand and explaining that she did notwant him to go further went away. When he thought she had quite gone shecame back. "You'll hear I was engaged to that Alfred Buckley who has gotinto trouble and has been arrested," she said. Hugh did not reply andher voice became sharp and a little challenging. "You'll hear we weregoing to be married. I don't know what you'll hear. It's a lie," shesaid and turning, hurried away.