Poor White: A Novel Read online

  CHAPTER XX

  It was a hot, dusty day, a week after Hugh's marriage to Clara, and Hughwas at work in his shop at Bidwell. How many days, weeks, and months hehad already worked there, thinking in iron--twisted, turned, torturedto follow the twistings and turnings of his mind--standing all day bya bench beside other workmen--before him always the little pilesof wheels, strips of unworked iron and steel, blocks of wood, theparaphernalia of the inventor's trade. Beside him, now that money hadcome to him, more and more workmen, men who had invented nothing, whowere without distinction in the life of the community, who had marriedno rich man's daughter.

  In the morning the other workmen, skillful fellows, who knew as Hugh hadnever known, the science of their iron craft, came straggling throughthe shop door into his presence. They were a little embarrassed beforehim. The greatness of his name rang in their minds.

  Many of the workmen were husbands, fathers of families. In the morningthey left their houses gladly but nevertheless came somewhat reluctantlyto the shop. As they came along the street, past other houses, theysmoked a morning pipe. Groups were formed. Many legs straggled alongthe street. At the door of the shop each man stopped. There was a sharptapping sound. Pipe bowls were knocked out against the door sill. Beforehe came into the shop, each man looked out across the open country thatstretched away to the north.

  For a week Hugh had been married to a woman who had not yet become hiswife. She belonged, still belonged, to a world he had thought of asoutside the possibilities of his life. Was she not young, strong,straight of body? Did she not array herself in what seemed unbelievablybeautiful clothes? The clothes she wore were a symbol of herself. Forhim she was unattainable.

  And yet she had consented to become his wife, had stood with him beforea man who had said words about honor and obedience.

  Then there had come the two terrible evenings--when he had gone back tothe farmhouse with her to find the wedding feast set in their honor,and that other evening when old Tom had brought him to the farmhousea defeated, frightened man who hoped the woman would put out her hand,would reassure him.

  Hugh was sure he had missed the great opportunity of his life. He hadmarried, but his marriage was not a marriage. He had got himself intoa position from which there was no possibility of escaping. "I'm acoward," he thought, looking at the other workmen in the shop. They,like himself, were married men and lived in a house with a woman. Atnight they went boldly into the presence of the woman. He had not donethat when the opportunity offered, and Clara could not come to him. Hecould understand that. His hands had builded a wall and the passing dayswere huge stones put on top of the wall. What he had not done becameevery day a more and more impossible thing to do.

  Tom, having taken Hugh back to Clara, was still concerned over theoutcome of their adventure. Every day he came to the shop and in theevening came to see them at the farmhouse. He hovered about, was like amother bird whose offspring had been prematurely pushed out of the nest.Every morning he came into the shop to talk with Hugh. He made jokesabout married life. Winking at a man standing nearby he put his handfamiliarly on Hugh's shoulder. "Well, how does married life go? It seemsto me you're a little pale," he said laughing.

  In the evening he came to the farmhouse and sat talking of his affairs,of the progress and growth of the town and his part in it. Withouthearing his words both Clara and Hugh sat in silence, pretending tolisten, glad of his presence.

  Hugh came to the shop at eight. On other mornings, all through that longweek of waiting, Clara had driven him to his work, the two riding insilence down Medina Road and through the crowded streets of the town;but on that morning he had walked.

  On Medina Road, near the bridge where he had once stood with Clara andwhere he had seen her hot with anger, something had happened, a trivialthing. A male bird pursued a female among the bushes beside the road.The two feathered, living creatures, vividly colored, alive with life,pitched and swooped through the air. They were like moving balls oflight going in and out of the dark green of foliage. There was in them amadness, a riot of life.

  Hugh had been tricked into stopping by the roadside. A tangle of thingsthat had filled his mind, the wheels, cogs, levers, all the intricateparts of the hay-loading machine, the things that lived in his minduntil his hand had made them into facts, were blown away like dust.For a moment he watched the living riotous things and then, as thoughjerking himself back into a path from which his feet had wandered,hurried onward to the shop, looking as he went not into the branches oftrees, but downward at the dust of the road.

  In the shop Hugh tried all morning to refurnish the warehouse of hismind, to put back into it the things blown so recklessly away. At tenTom came in, talked for a moment and then flitted away. "You are stillthere. My daughter still has you. You have not run away again," heseemed to be saying to himself.

  The day grew warm and the sky, seen through the shop window by the benchwhere Hugh tried to work, was overcast with clouds.

  At noon the workmen went away, but Clara, who on other days had cometo drive Hugh to the farmhouse for lunch, did not appear. When all wassilent in the shop he stopped work, washed his hands and put on hiscoat.

  He went to the shop door and then came back to the bench. Before himlay an iron wheel on which he had been at work. It was intended to drivesome intricate part of the hay-loading machine. Hugh took it in his handand carried it to the back of the shop where there was an anvil. Withoutconsciousness and scarcely realizing what he did he laid it on the anviland taking a great sledge in his hand swung it over his head.

  The blow struck was terrific. Into it Hugh put all of his protestagainst the grotesque position into which he had been thrown by hismarriage to Clara.

  The blow accomplished nothing. The sledge descended and thecomparatively delicate metal wheel was twisted, knocked out of shape. Itspurted from under the head of the sledge and shot past Hugh's head andout through a window, breaking a pane of glass. Fragments of the brokenglass fell with a sharp little tinkling sound upon a heap of twistedpieces of iron and steel lying beside the anvil....

  Hugh did not eat lunch that day nor did he go to the farmhouse or returnto work at the shop. He walked, but this time did not walk in countryroads where male and female birds dart in and out of bushes. An intensedesire to know something intimate and personal concerning men and womenand the lives they led in their houses had taken possession of him. Hewalked in the daylight up and down in the streets of Bidwell.

  To the right, over the bridge leading out of Turner's Road, the mainstreet of Bidwell ran along a river bank. In that direction the hillsout of the country to the south came down to the river's edge and therewas a high bluff. On the bluff and back of it on a sloping hillside manyof the more pretentious new houses of the prosperous Bidwell citizenshad been built. Facing the river were the largest houses, with groundsin which trees and shrubs had been planted and in the streets along thehill, less and less pretentious as they receded from the river, wereother houses built and being built, long rows of houses, long streets ofhouses, houses in brick, stone, and wood.

  Hugh went from the river front back into this maze of streets andhouses. Some instinct led him there. It was where the men and womenof Bidwell who had prospered and had married went to live, to makethemselves houses. His father-in-law had offered to buy him a riverfront place and already that meant much in Bidwell.

  He wanted to see women who, like Clara, had got themselves husbands,what they were like. "I've seen enough of men," he thought halfresentfully as he went along.

  All afternoon he walked in streets, going up and down before houses inwhich women lived with their men. A detached mood had possession ofhim. For an hour he stood under a tree idly watching workmen engaged inbuilding another house. When one of the workmen spoke to him he walkedaway and went into a street where men were laying a cement pavementbefore a completed house.

  In a furtive way he kept looking about for women, hungering to see theirfaces. "What are they up to? I'd like to
find out," his mind seemed tobe saying.

  The women came out of the doors of the houses and passed him as he wentslowly along. Other women in carriages drove in the streets. They werewell-dressed women and seemed sure of themselves. "Things are all rightwith me. For me things are settled and arranged," they seemed to say.All the streets in which he walked seemed to be telling the story ofthings settled and arranged. The houses spoke of the same things. "I ama house. I am not built until things are settled and arranged. I meanthat," they said.

  Hugh grew very tired. In the later afternoon a small bright-eyedwoman--no doubt she had been one of the guests at his weddingfeast--stopped him. "Are you planning to buy or build up our way, Mr.McVey?" she asked. He shook his head. "I'm looking around," he said andhurried away.

  Anger took the place of perplexity in him. The women he saw in thestreets and in the doors of the houses were such women as his own womanClara. They had married men--"no better than myself," he told himself,growing bold.

  They had married men and something had happened to them. Something wassettled. They could live in streets and in houses. Their marriages hadbeen real marriages and he had a right to a real marriage. It was nottoo much to expect out of life.

  "Clara has a right to that also," he thought and his mind began toidealize the marriages of men and women. "On every hand here I see them,the neat, well-dressed, handsome women like Clara. How happy they are!

  "Their feathers have been ruffled though," he thought angrily. "It waswith them as with that bird I saw being pursued through the trees. Therehas been pursuit and a pretense of trying to escape. There has beenan effort made that was not an effort, but feathers have been ruffledhere."

  When his thoughts had driven him into a half desperate mood Hugh wentout of the streets of bright, ugly, freshly built, freshly painted andfurnished houses, and down into the town. Several men homeward bound atthe end of their day of work called to him. "I hope you are thinking ofbuying or building up our way," they said heartily.

  * * * * *

  It began to rain and darkness came, but Hugh did not go home to Clara.It did not seem to him that he could spend another night in thehouse with her, lying awake, hearing the little noises of the night,waiting--for courage. He could not sit under the lamp through anotherevening pretending to read. He could not go with Clara up the stairsonly to leave her with a cold "good-night" at the top of the stairs.

  Hugh went up the Medina Road almost to the house and then retraced hissteps and got into a field. There was a low swampy place in which thewater came up over his shoetops, and after he had crossed that there wasa field overgrown with a tangle of vines. The night became so dark thathe could see nothing and darkness reigned over his spirit. For hours hewalked blindly, but it did not occur to him that as he waited, hatingthe waiting, Clara also waited; that for her also it was a time of trialand uncertainty. To him it seemed her course was simple and easy. Shewas a white pure thing--waiting--for what? for courage to come in to himin order that an assault be made upon her whiteness and purity.

  That was the only answer to the question Hugh could find within himself.The destruction of what was white and pure was a necessary thing inlife. It was a thing men must do in order that life go on. As for women,they must be white and pure--and wait.

  * * * * *

  Filled with inward resentment Hugh at last did go to the farmhouse. Wetand with dragging, heavy feet he turned out of the Medina Road to findthe house dark and apparently deserted.

  Then a new and puzzling situation arose. When he stepped over thethreshold and into the house he knew Clara was there.

  On that day she had not driven him to work in the morning or gone forhim at noon hour because she did not want to look at him in the light ofday, did not want again to see the puzzled, frightened look in his eyes.She had wanted him in the darkness alone, had waited for darkness. Nowit was dark in the house and she waited for him.

  How simple it was! Hugh came into the living-room, stumbled forward intothe darkness, and found the hat-rack against the wall near the stairwayleading to the bedrooms above. Again he had surrendered what he would nodoubt have called the manhood in himself, and hoped only to be able toescape the presence he felt in the room, to creep off upstairs to hisbed, to lie awake listening to noises, waiting miserably for another dayto come. But when he had put his dripping hat on one of the pegs of therack and had found the lower step with his foot thrust into darkness, avoice called to him.

  "Come here, Hugh," Clara said softly and firmly, and like a boy caughtdoing a forbidden act he went toward her. "We have been very silly,Hugh," he heard her voice saying softly.

  * * * * *

  Hugh went to where Clara sat in a chair by a window. From him there wasno protest and no attempt to escape the love-making that followed. Fora moment he stood in silence and could see her white figure below him inthe chair. It was like something still far away, but coming swiftly as abird flies to him--upward to him. Her hand crept up and lay in his hand.It seemed unbelievably large. It was not soft, but hard and firm. Whenher hand had rested in his for a moment she arose and stood beside him.Then the hand went out of his and touched, caressed his wet coat, hiswet hair, his cheeks. "My flesh must be white and cold," he thought, andthen he did not think any more.

  Gladness took hold of him, a gladness that came up out of the innerparts of himself as she had come up to him out of the chair. For days,weeks, he had been thinking of his problem as a man's problem, hisdefeat had been a man's defeat.

  Now there was no defeat, no problem, no victory. In himself he did notexist. Within himself something new had been born or another somethingthat had always lived with him had stirred to life. It was not awkward.It was not afraid. It was a thing as swift and sure as the flight ofthe male bird through the branches of trees and it was in pursuit ofsomething light and swift in her, something that would fly through lightand darkness but fly not too swiftly, something of which he need notbe afraid, something that without the need of understanding he couldunderstand as one understands the need of breath in a close place.

  With a laugh as soft and sure as her own Hugh took Clara into his arms.A few minutes later they went up stairs and twice Hugh stumbled on thestairway. It did not matter. His long awkward body was a thing outsidehimself. It might stumble and fall many times but the new thing he hadfound, the thing inside himself that responded to the thing inside theshell that was Clara his wife, did not stumble. It flew like a bird outof darkness into the light. At the moment he thought the sweeping flightof life thus begun would run on forever.

  BOOK SIX