Stubble Part 19

"Why, I took Tom LeMasters away from her," she giggled, and leaned over with her wrinkled and scented face close to his, grasping him by the arm.

After that they were bosom friends. He told her about Bloomfield as it came back to him, rhapsodized over its meadows and woods and "purling streams," and felt a rising desire to taste its joys again. And all the while his voice would fall on deaf ears and her eyes would take on a misty look as though peering down dark, dusty corridors; and interrupting him, she would recall the circ.u.mstances of some famous party, summoning forth the creaking images of old men and women, yellow and withering, some of them long dead.

The afternoon pa.s.sed swiftly away. They found themselves in a bit of lane that dipped down into a little grove of trees, just as the sun was gathering his cohorts for departure. A breath of fragrant breeze, heavy laden with clover and sweet with the stretch of cool, moist shade through which it had pa.s.sed, came sweeping across the road, and the sounds of a farm hand whetting his scythe. Through a rift in the trees appeared a patch of delicate blue sky and the edge of a rosy cloud. Mrs. LeMasters came to the wistful end of an alluring and musty reminiscence and gazed regretfully at the tawdry beauties of the present. Then she turned her eyes upon Joe, and with a sigh that was sodden with romance: "How could you ever bear to leave that adorable spot?"

Joe smiled in mellow acquiescence and almost agreed with her.

Of course, the Stokes car never had a chance. Before he took his leave of her he had her signed order for a "Sedan" for immediate delivery.

And she grasped his hand and held it, leaning coyly close. "We're going to have some wonderful times this fall. We'll drive to Bloomfield, just you and I. And what am I going to do about a chauffeur? What will I ever do with a strange creature who cares for nothing but speed? Why don't you stay with me and drive for me? We'll just not stay home a minute."

He temporized, laughing, and finally tore himself away. And when he stepped from the car outside of Blake's Restaurant and was met by a blast of hot air, laden with the breath of fried onions, he felt himself very much alone. He ate his supper dreamily and retrospectively. The vacant chair across the little table added to the plaintiveness. He had liver and onions and a chocolate eclair and felt that he needed a woman to look after him.

He got in the car and drove slowly south. When he came to Lytle Street he turned off to the right. It was not quite dark and people pa.s.sing on the pavement seemed to him to peer out at him. He felt self-conscious and slowed down the car still more till he barely crept along, with headlights blazing two bright paths before him. Myrtle Macomber had told him he might come and he did not wish to seem to be too eager. But as he sought his bearings, watching the unfamiliar fronts of houses and clumps of shade, he suffered little tremblings of expectancy in spite of his restraint.

Directly the house appeared; he had no difficulty in recognizing it.

It stood out bleakly against the evening sky, with its pointed cupola thrust upward like a warning finger, with its wooden fence and gate.

It bad no modest shrouding of trees and bushes in the shadow of which one might veil one's entrance. For a moment he was afraid lest he be too early, so he alighted, switched off the lamps, and proceeded across the pavement to the gate very slowly. Then from the shelter of the vines on the side porch he heard the hum of voices and a laugh.

Grasping his dignity firmly like a walking stick, he stalked up the pavement to the house.

Myrtle came to meet him. The dim outline of her in her filmy dress and the elusive scent of her presence stirred him again. Her voice was gentle as she laughed a greeting and she gave his hand an imperceptible squeeze as he came up the steps. His stiffness vanished, but the sound of voices from back in the shadow disturbed him. An absurd personality crowded to his lips as she led him forward, but he repressed it.

He was introduced. There was quite a crowd a.s.sembled and in the dark he was conscious of only a blob of faces and the grip of one hand that was quite too hot. Even in the dark he felt embarra.s.sed, as the conscious caller exposed nakedly to the world. What had she done this for? It was not too considerate of her. Perhaps it was purely accidental. He began to speculate on how soon the crowd might break up, and found himself dangling uncomfortably on the porch railing close beside the chair of a shadowy girl who was buried in its depths.

He could look down into the place where he imagined her face might be. He was quite close to her and in the jabber of voices she was silent. No one seemed to pay him the slightest attention, and his interest mounted in a growing intimacy of silence with this girl in the chair. A door opened and he saw Myrtle's figure pa.s.s across the room within and busy herself with something on the table. In the faint light that now pervaded the porch he again peered down at the figure beside him. Instantly the glamour vanished. The face he saw was thin and sharp, with hair slicked back from the forehead and narrow, slanting sharp eyes. He caught a glimpse of neck and shoulders above a brazen filmy waist, and in the splash of light and shadow there was no softness of contour, but cruel bones and hollows.

"Think you'll know me next time?" came a harsh voice and a laugh, and he straightened up and murmured an apology. He felt very much embarra.s.sed and disturbed. His mellow complacence had fled precipitately. In his ears sounded the rattle of personalities. It was as harsh and as constant and as senseless as machine-gun fire. At least he could make an early "get-away."

Myrtle came and stood beside him from somewhere in the darkness. The tip of her little finger barely touched his hand as she stood there, leaning against the railing and firing back some "chaff" into the darkness. There came a lull in the chatter and Joe was feeling a bit mollified. Suddenly, before he realized it, the crowd was leaving, and one by one they filed past him, each bidding good-night. There was the thin girl in the chair, then two boys who were entirely nondescript, with noisy throats cut out of the same copper plate, a soft billowy shadow of a woman under a floppy hat and exuding a ghastly sweet, cloying perfume. Her bare arm was as soft and flabby as jelly as she stretched it out to Myrtle. After her came another man, rather hesitantly, and keeping in the shadow. His voice was good, rather deep, rather strong. As he pa.s.sed, he called Joe by name.

Twisting around in the light, Joe saw that it was Hawkins, one of the owners of the "k.u.m-quik Tire Company," a rather taciturn, solemn sort of man to do business with. Joe was surprised.

In a moment they were all gone and the porch was dark and still. Their pa.s.sage was as inexplicable as their presence had been. A dim band of light lay across the floor of the porch and Myrtle stood before him, facing him. He could not see her face.

"Well?" she said, as though she had known him for years.

"Well?" he echoed uncertainly. Her tone had implied a question or perhaps it was a suggestion. She stood quite motionless; he could have reached out his hand and put it on her shoulder, "Suppose we go for a ride," he suggested lamely, not feeling quite sure of himself, feeling that perhaps it was not just the thing to propose on his first call.

For a moment she made no answer, but stood there looking at him. He could feel rather than see the fixity of her gaze. Suddenly she tripped away from him and ran into the house, calling back over her shoulder, "Have to get a wrap. Be back in a minute."

After they had started he regretted the suggestion. It had shut off the prospect of a languorous evening. It was not in harmony with his mood; he had much rather loll back on a bench and steep himself in musings.

Accordingly, he turned away from town, keeping on quiet back streets.

He did not even ask her where she wanted to go. The night was soft and dark with a sky that hung low like black velvet in which was sprinkled a soft studding of stars. The air wrapped about them, lazy and warm; it was not like night air at all. There was a peculiar exotic feel to it which kept the senses in a state of semi-coma yet alive to the slightest change. Joe half closed his eyes and leaned back against the cus.h.i.+on like an old cat getting her back scratched. The soft perfume of the girl's hair, the delicious mystery of the impenetrable sky above them, the caress of the air, all seemed to have been provided for his own especial enjoyment. He was suddenly exultant that he had escaped the house, that he was out and beneath the sky, and above all, that he had someone with him. The feeling of unfulfillment that had wracked him constantly was giving way. He imagined a sort of proprietary right to the conditions about him. Luxury, ease, pleasure, all that rolling along underneath those stars with an exquisite, beautiful thing beside him was symbolical of, seemed justly to have fallen to his lot. The dull, unfathomable ache of suppressed desire had vanished and he was complacent.

"Well," a voice startled him. "Aren't you ever coming back to earth?"

He was suddenly confused.

"I don't think it's a bit nice, carrying me off and then thinking about some other girl. Aren't you ever going to say a word?"

He recovered and found that they had travelled about two blocks. The spell faded. He regained mastery of himself. "I've been waitin' for permission to speak. Yon only said I might take you for a ride." He turned and gave her a personal look.

"Where are you taking me then?" Her liveliness seemed to be returning.

"Do you have to have permission for everything you do?"

"I'm not sure," said Joe. "We're goin' to take a look at the river.

That's my own idea."

"How'd you know I wanted to? Perhaps I had rather do something else."

He looked at her suddenly, but before he could speak, she leaned toward him impulsively and laid her hand on his shoulder. "There, I was just kidding. There's nothing in the world I'd rather do. It's a heavenly night. And I like you for your silence. It takes a real person to be still at the right time. Go ahead and dream all you want.

It's heavenly."

She removed her hand, but in some way she seemed to remain nearer to him than she had been. A little, delightful shudder of appreciation ran through him. He no longer felt isolated. The proprietary sense was growing stronger.

They wound in and out in a devious path, for the streets in the eastern part of the city were laid out in accordance with whim and not by plan. And the rows of cottages lining the streets had acquired something of mystery from the canopy of night, and even the squalid sheds that appeared on the edge of the city's virility were wrapped in a shadow that loaned them charm. There came a short stretch of hedge-encompa.s.sed road and a damp musty smell of water, beyond, in the blackness on both sides. Then they rolled out upon a clattering bridge, turned a corner, and before them lay the river.

Joe slowed down the car. A tiny light flashed and then lay stretching its rays in a yellow ripple out into a blue-black immensity. A shadow, beyond it and entirely detached, appeared drifting slowly, and pa.s.sed them, an empty "plop-plop" following vaguely in its wake. The road turned again, a little to the left this time, and swis.h.i.+ng branches brushed the car, and then almost at their feet stretched away to the left a broad, black, moving shadow, matching the sky and studded likewise by tiny pin-p.r.i.c.ks of light. Ahead, unwound the road, a straight ghostly ribbon fading away into a giant's mouth, and softly swept down upon them the river wind, almost imperceptible in its rustling and a little chill. Joe felt a quiver of happiness.

"You're the noisiest man I ever knew," interrupted Myrtle plaintively.

"Ooh! This place gives me the creeps."

He could feel the warmth of her and he laughed. "Swampy here a bit from the creek bottom. Up ahead it is higher and better. That crowd all come to see you? You shouldn't have run them away."

"Oh, it was time they were going. They knew I wanted to see you." He could almost feel her eyes and felt that she was making a play for him. It was a new and pleasing experience.

"So you really did, did you? I'm flattered."

There was a coaxing, cloying note in her voice when she spoke directly, that in some way coincided with the breath of the night and the feel of that velvet sky. He got her to talk just to hear the sound of her voice and she chattered on for a while about airy nothings that vibrated pleasantly in his ear: told him about a trip she had just had up to the Indiana lakes, regretted the ruining of a summer frock on a boating party, asked him his opinion of the necessity of chaperones on picnics. There was a suggestion of deference in her manner as well as lightness, a quality that stirred him a little more pleasantly even than the other qualities. She was different from others he knew.

They mounted a slight rise in the road and then dipped into a cool hollow fringed about by the shadows of willows. She paused suddenly in her recital and gave a little ecstatic cry. Seizing his arm she pointed. Over beyond, through a gap in the willows, lay a stretch of shadowy river meadow reaching back for a great distance to the second rise and fringed about its edge by even blacker shadows. And above it danced a million fire-flies weaving ceaselessly to and fro, waving their soft lanterns. They hung, a cloud of twinkling radiance, upon a soft black curtain.

"Oh, stop the car," cried Myrtle. "The lovely things! Let's watch 'em from here."

For some moments neither spoke. They were drawn up to one side of the road partly in the shelter of the willows that lined it and it was snug and pleasant and warm. The light breeze could not reach them. Joe felt exalted. In this communion of spirit he was experiencing something entirely new. It was as though he had known her always. He could feel sure about her. She liked the things he liked. She was alive and she was not aloof. There was a joy in living; she felt it and he felt it. And she was sitting very close. With an easy stretching of cramped muscles he slid his arm along the back of the seat and let it slip carelessly about her shoulder. There was a moment of delicious freedom and relaxation, of kindliness and friendliness and a thousand other little sensations, to say nothing of a spark of a thrill--when she moved easily forward, contracting her shoulders.

"Let's go," she said dully.

Instantly the illusion vanished. Back into his self-belittling he slipped and was silent. Away fled the ease and complacency, and the wind came up from the river and chilled his ankles.

A moment later she asked him quite brightly, "_What_ do you do?"

He had been thinking upon his sin and was startled at the casualness of the question. He laughed, a bit nervous. "Why, didn't you know?

What'd you imagine?"

"Of course I don't know. Run some sort of plant, I would guess."

"Nope," he replied, and his voice had not the low, ringing a.s.surance he might have wished, but was a little too loud, a little too high.

"Nothing but this car."