Susan"s strange eyes turned upon him. "In Sutherland?" she asked breathlessly.
"Right in Sutherland," replied he complacently. "I think I"ll buy Jake Antle"s place in Jefferson Street."
Susan was blanched and trembling. "Oh, no," she cried. "You mustn"t do that!"
Jeb laughed. "You see if I don"t. And we"ll live in style, and you can keep a gal and stay dolled up all the time. Oh, I know how to treat you."
"I want to stay in the country," cried Susan. "I hate Sutherland."
"Now, don"t you be afraid," soothed Jeb. "When people see you"ve got a husband and money they"ll not be down on you no more.
They"ll forget all about your maw--and they won"t know nothin"
about the other thing. You treat me right and I"ll treat you right. I"m not one to rake up the past. There ain"t arry bit of meanness about me!"
"But you"ll let me stay here in the country?" pleaded Susan. Her imagination was torturing her with pictures of herself in Sutherland and the people craning and whispering and mocking.
"You go where I go," replied Jeb. "A woman"s place is with her man. And I"ll knock anybody down that looks c.o.c.keyed at you."
"Oh!" murmured Susan, sinking back against the support.
"Don"t you fret, Susie," ordered Jeb, confident and patronizing.
"You do what I say and everything"ll be all right. That"s the way to get along with me and get nice clothes--do what I say.
With them that crosses me I"m mighty ugly. But you ain"t a-goin"
to cross me. . . . Now, about the house. I reckon I"d better send Keziah off right away. You kin cook?"
"A--a little," said Susan.
Jeb looked relieved. "Then she"d be in the way. Two women about always fights--and Keziah"s got the Ferguson temper. She"s afraid of me, but now and then she fergits and has a tantrum."
Jeb looked at her with a smile and a frown. "Perk up a little,"
he more than half ordered. "I don"t want Keziah jeerin" at me."
Susan made a pitiful effort to smile. He eyed it sourly, grunted, gave the mare a cut with the whip that caused her to leap forward in a gallop. "Whoa!" he yelled. "Whoa--d.a.m.n you!"
And he sawed cruelly at her mouth until she quieted down. A turning and they were before a shallow story-and-a-half frame house which squatted like an old roadside beggar behind a weather-beaten picket fence. The sagging shingle roof sloped abruptly; there were four little windows downstairs and two smaller upstairs. The door was in the center of the house; a weedy path led from its crooked step, between two patches of weedy gra.s.s, to the gate in the fence.
"Whoa!" shouted Jeb, with the double purpose of stopping the mare and informing the house of his arrival. Then to Susan: "You git down and I"ll drive round to the barn yonder." He nodded toward a dilapidated clapboard structure, small and mean, set between a dirty lopsided straw heap and a manure heap. "Go right in and make yourself at home. Tell Keziah who you air. I"ll be along, soon as I unhitch and feed the mare."
Susan was staring stupidly at the house--at her new home.
"Git down," he said sharply. "You don"t act as if your hearin"
or your manners was much to brag on."
He felt awkward and embarra.s.sed with this delicately bred, lovely child-woman in the, to him, wonderfully fine and fashionable dress. To hide his nervousness and to brave it out, he took the only way he knew, the only way shy people usually know--the way of gruffness. It was not a ferocious gruffness for a man of his kind; but it seemed so to her who had been used to gentleness only, until these last few days. His grammar, his untrained voice, his rough clothes, the odor of stale sweat and farm labor he exhaled, made him horrible to her--though she only vaguely knew why she felt so wretched and why her body shrank from him.
She stepped down from the sulky, almost falling in her dizziness and blindness. Jeb touched the mare with the whip and she was alone before the house--a sweet forlorn figure, childish, utterly out of place in those surroundings. On the threshold, in faded and patched calico, stood a tall gaunt woman with a family likeness to Jeb. She had thin shiny black hair, a hard brown skin, high cheekbones and snapping black eyes. When her thin lips parted she showed on the left side of the mouth three large and glittering gold teeth that in the contrast made their gray, not too clean neighbors seem white.
"Howdy!" she called in a tone of hostility.
Susan tried in vain to respond. She stood gazing.
"What d"ye want?"
"He he told me to go in," faltered Susan. She had no sense of reality. It was a dream--only a dream--and she would awaken in her own clean pretty pale-gray bedroom with Ruth gayly calling her to come down to breakfast.
"Who are you?" demanded Keziah--for at a glance it was the sister.
"I"m--I"m Susan Lenox."
"Oh--Zeke Warham"s niece. Come right in." And Keziah looked as if she were about to bite and claw.
Susan pushed open the latchless gate, went up the short path to the doorstep. "I think I"ll wait till he comes," she said.
"No. Come in and sit down, Miss Lenox." And Keziah drew a rush-bottomed rocking chair toward the doorway. Susan was looking at the interior. The lower floor of the house was divided into three small rooms. This central room was obviously the parlor--the calico-covered sofa, the center table, the two dingy chromos, and a battered cottage organ made that certain.
On the floor was a rag carpet; on the walls, torn and dirty paper, with huge weather stains marking where water had leaked from the roof down the supporting beams. Keziah scowled at Susan"s frank expression of repulsion for the surroundings.
Susan seated herself on the edge of the chair, put her bundle beside her.
"I allow you"ll stay to dinner," said Keziah.
"Yes," replied Susan.
"Then I"ll go put on some more to cook."
"Oh, no--please don"t--I couldn"t eat anything--really, I couldn"t." The girl spoke hysterically.
Just then Jeb came round the house and appeared in the doorway.
He grinned and winked at Susan, looked at his sister. "Well, Keziah," said he, "what d"ye think of her?"
"She says she"s going to stay to dinner," observed Keziah, trying to maintain the veneer of manners she had put on for company.
The young man laughed loudly. "That"s a good one--that is!" he cried, nodding and winking at Susan. "So you ain"t tole her? Well, Keziah, I"ve been and gone and got married. And there _she_ is."
"Shut up--you fool!" said Keziah. And she looked apologetically at their guest. But the expression of Susan"s face made her catch her breath. "For the Lord"s sake!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "She ain"t married _you!_"
"Why not?" demanded Jeb. "Ain"t this a free country? Ain"t I as good as anybody?"
Keziah blew out her breath in a great gust and seated herself on the tattered calico cover of the sofa. Susan grew deathly white.
Her hands trembled. Then she sat quiet upon the edge of the old rush-bottomed chair. There was a terrible silence, broken by Jeb"s saying loudly and fiercely, "Keziah, you go get the dinner. Then you pack your duds and clear out for Uncle Bob"s."
Keziah stared at the bride, rose and went to the rear door. "I"m goin" now," she answered. "The dinner"s ready except for putting on the table."
Through the flimsy part.i.tions they heard her mounting the uncarpeted stairs, hustling about upon an uncarpeted floor above, and presently descending. "I"ll hoof it," she said, reappearing in the doorway. "I"ll send for my things this afternoon."
Jeb, not caring to provoke the "Ferguson temper," said nothing.
"As for this here marryin"," continued Keziah, "I never allowed you"d fall so low as to take a baby, and a b.a.s.t.a.r.d at that."
She whirled away. Jeb flung his hat on the table, flung himself on the sofa. "Well--that"s settled," said he. "You kin get the dinner. It"s all in there." And he jerked his head toward the door in the part.i.tion to the left. Susan got up, moved toward the indicated door. Jeb laughed. "Don"t you think you might take off your hat and stay awhile?" said he.
She removed her hat, put it on top of the bundle which she left on the floor beside the rocking chair. She went into the kitchen dining-room. It was a squalid room, its ceiling and walls smoke-stained from the cracked and never polished stove in the corner. The air was foul with the strong old onions stewing on the stove. In a skillet slices of pork were frying. On the back of the stove stood a pan of mashed potatoes and a tin coffeepot.
On the stained flowered cloth which covered the table in the middle of the room had been laid coa.r.s.e, cracked dishes and discolored steel knives and forks with black wooden handles.
Susan, half fainting, dropped into a chair by one of the open windows. A mult.i.tude of fat flies from the stable were running and crawling everywhere, were buzzing about her head. She was aroused by Jeb"s voice: "Why, what the--the d.a.m.nation! You"ve fell asleep!"