Three days later, the day before New Year’s, Dan Hendricks and Beatrice Faire were quietly married in Ripley. Not even Sarah was there; the witnesses were strangers.
The news exploded in South Kenton like a charge of dynamite. As my father said, there had not been that much excitement since the Civil War. Friends flocked to Sarah Faire with their condolences, and her abject grief and stupefied despair were all that even the most morbid could desire. The death of a dear one could hardly have affected her more deeply, and my mother said that the poor woman could not be alone. So Livy moved into Beatrice’s room, and after school hours she filled the house with her resolute common sense and practical kindheartedness. I believe that in all of South Kenton, only Livy, Mortimer and myself understood the true cause of Sarah’s anguish.
At first the sentiment of South Kenton was that the man should be horsewhipped, ridden on a rail out of town, even lynched. There were lurid threats made against him. He had seduced and tricked into marriage a sweet and innocent young woman, inveigled her into a secret wedding against her mother’s knowledge and desire. There was nothing too bad for him. No wonder poor Sarah was so heartbroken, her lovely young daughter marrying a scoundrel and an outcast and a yellow dog like Dan Hendricks! There were dark speculations as to the sinister and evil pressure he must have brought upon the poor girl to make her commit such a desperate and terrible act. Some of the more romantic asked if he had held a mortgage on Sarah’s house; others said he must have threatened her with obscure but dreadful penalties. A few of the young hotbloods suggested that they drag her forcibly from him and thrust him into an outbound cattle car. Three, I believe, actually went out to Dan’s farm, but discovered that he and Beatrice had gone on a honeymoon, and old Martha did not know when they would return.
A month later they did return, and bought South Kenton’s newest and prettiest house at the foot of Main Street. Old Endicott King had built the house at the request of Jack Rugby and Amelia Burnett, but when it was actually built and paid for Amelia took a dislike to it. Her papa and mama had bought ten acres in the suburbs and had built an immense house upon it, and disliking to be separated from their only child had asked the young couple to live with them. So the house, snug, of white stone and stucco, amazingly simple and beautiful for that era, had remained empty. This was the house that Dan Hendricks bought. Jack Rugby was a shrewd young man, and he saw no reason why he should not turn a handsome profit, even if it meant doing business with Dan.
An ominous silence fell over the town when the bridal couple moved in. With cold and menacing eyes it watched vanloads of beautiful new furniture from Ripley and from distant Warburton carried into the house, furniture which made the ladies sigh with envy. There was even a grand piano of rosewood and mahogany, the like of which South Kenton had never seen before. Beatrice was invisible, as was Dan, but a smart young girl was seen hanging magnificent curtains at the low, bowed windows. Finally two sleek horses appeared in the stable, and a grand new carriage.
South Kenton drew a deep breath, and looked sheepish. It began to argue diffidently. Well, perhaps, it was all for the best. They were moving into town, and setting up housekeeping just like other young folks, but more elaborately. That meant business for the stores and employment for two or three women, at least, for the house had immense gardens, and another smart young girl had joined the first. For a little while South Kenton felt resentment, then curiosity, then an active desire to take the bridal couple to its bosom. Evidently Bee, it argued, was having firm and serious effect on her husband. She would “make something out of him.” They were signifying their intention of asking to be forgiven and received. Dan Hendricks’ money—Ezra King made articulate the feelings of the whole town when he said: “We’re Christians, aren’t we? What’s bygones is bygones. He’s coming to us and asking us to take him in. Why not? It ain’t his fault that he had a drunken father and everything When he was a boy. Bee’ll make a man of him, show him the right way, civilize him, cure him of a lot of his fool ideas. No good raking up old coals.” He spoke virtuously, for Dan had recently transferred his account to South Kenton’s First National, and there was self-satisfaction in Ezra’s dignified offer of forgiveness.
They moved into their new house quietly. South Kenton did not rush to extend the olive branch, nor did it kill the fatted calf immediately. It held itself woundedly aloof. It saw Beatrice come and go, with humble bent head; it saw her touch her eyes with the finest lace handkerchiefs, heard her soft and pleading voice. It saw Dan, too, but he seemed remote and quiet, minding his own business. South Kenton finally decided that they had been punished enough, and was melted in a rush by Bee’s humility and gentleness and tear-filled eyes.
Bee gave a housewarming, sending humble and beseeching little notes to her friends, begging them to come to see her and Dan on the night of Thursday, February 2, 1897, at eight o’clock. Every worthy lady in town pretended to refuse, to shake her head, to demur and sniff, and murmur. They discussed with each other whether they ought to accept or not, but it was a foregone conclusion that they would. The discussion was merely atmosphere. Their husbands were going also. On the night of the party my parents prepared to go, and were astonished when I announced that I would remain at home.
“Why, I thought Dan was a particular friend of yours,” said my father.
“Bee has a telephone, and if there are any calls Mabel can call you there, if necessary,” objected my mother.
They went away together, unable to understand my continued refusal. When they had gone I dressed hastily and went to Sarah’s little house where Livy was boarding. I knew that neither of the two women was going to Bee’s party. Sarah’s attitude had been the object of great, amazed, and somewhat indignant discussion for several weeks. She had apparently been unable to forgive her daughter, and when her friends urged her to do so, she would merely look at them with a strange white smile without answering. Livy had pleaded tiredness and a cold, and indeed the poor girl had been looking badly of late, and I was much worried about her. Her color was exceptionally bad, and she had become thin to the point of emaciation. She seemed always on the point of bursting into tears; I knew the symptoms of impending nervous breakdown. The children at school were, apparently too much for her, just released from the burden of the care of her father and his house. Therefore her absence was not commented upon. As for Sarah, the excited indignation that followed her refusal to attend her only daughter’s housewarming almost surpassed the excitement of the town when it had learned of Bee’s marriage.
I arrived at the little old house. It stood, its trees weighted down with silent and heavy snow, banks of whiteness rising about it, one or two windows burning with a yellow light that fell softly on the snow, and all wrapped in a wash of dark blue moonlight and spectral shadows. Livy let me in, her slight figure pale and drooping in a dark red shirtwaist and serge skirt, her masses of black hair seeming too heavy for her tired young head. She told me that Mortimer Rugby was there, and that Sarah had been ill and had gone to bed. She did not appear to be particularly glad to see me, or rather, I should say, she seemed overwhelmed with a sort of stupefied lassitude, and her eyes closed frequently as she spoke to me. I tried to express my alarm and give professional advice as we stood in the hallway, Livy waiting for me to remove my coat and hat, but she glanced aside indifferently.
Though a fire burned in the little parlor, it seemed no longer gay and full of joy. A chill gloom had descended upon it; even the lamps looked cold, and the snow that was heaped on the window ledges sent their chill breath into the room. Before the fireplace, crouched in a chair, sat Mortimer Rugby, rubbing his hands. His head was sunken between the shabby folds of his coat, and his hair, white and thin though still long, looked like wisps of dead hair on the head of a skull. He turned his long and sunken face to me as I entered, blinked behind his glasses, and nodded. I could hear the dry whisper of his palms as he kept on rubbing them together. I had not shivered outside in the bitter cold of the February night, but I shivered now. I sat down opposite the old man, and Livy sat down between us. She had been knitting, apparently, and now resumed it. The small coals in the fireplace crackled, but they gave out no warmth, and I started involuntarily when a sudden wind rose and rattled the half-frozen windowpanes.
“Cold night,” I said. Livy’s needles clicked and she did not answer, but Mortimer nodded again. I remembered the room vividly as it had been in my childhood, bright and sunny and warm, with pots of geraniums burning red and bravely against the snow, and Sarah’s happy voice. It was like a nightmare to me now. There was a faint odor of decay over everything, and I saw that the white paint on the gay little table was peeling off, showing patches of dull gray under it. I stood up, restlessly.
“You didn’t go to Bee’s party, I see, Mr. Rugby,” I said. He shook his head without looking at me, then said dryly: “I don’t like funerals, even if the corpse is set out pretty and natural and there are lots of flowers.”
“I don’t understand it,” I said gloomily. “I don’t know why Dan moved into town. He liked his farm out there; he seemed happy, for once. I thought nothing in the world would tear him away from it.”
“Bee didn’t like the farm, I suppose,” said Livy quietly, without looking at me.
“Oh, it’s impossible!” I burst out violently. “It’s—it’s like an Alice in Wonderland thing. Grotesque. I can’t believe it’s really Dan. I know him; he’s not changed underneath. What has she done to him?” No one answered this; it was as if I had not spoken, and I went on dully, “She’s poisonous. She’s a—a sort of upas tree!”
Mortimer glanced across at me with a sudden wrinkling of his face into a smile. There was something wryly humorous in his voice as he remarked casually: “Upas tree. That’s strong language. We three here don’t like Bee. But I wouldn’t make her so dramatic, if I were you, Jim. Too dramatic. I’ve done with drama; it only makes you ridiculous. Life isn’t dramatic. It’s just long, dull misery. No, I never liked Bee. You make her out to be some sort of a bloodsucker, sort of heroic or something, splendid, like Lucifer. She isn’t. She’s just a nasty, mean girl, selfish, sly, suspicious and cruel. But nothing so magnificent as a upas tree, which I hear bears very lovely flowers. There’s nothing lovely about Bee.” He paused. “I used to think Bee was a very bright girl, but it’s only the brightness of cunning and self-seeking and greed. Like a weasel. Yes, there’s something very much like a weasel about her,” he added thoughtfully.
“And Dan’s the poor rabbit,” I exclaimed bitterly.
I expected him to smile again, but he merely looked at me oddly. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I don’t know. I’m afraid not.”
His remarked puzzled me then, but a long time later I remembered it, and marvelled at his penetration and the fear that seemed to hang on his words.
“I still don’t understand it,” I fumed. “It’s beyond me. I can’t see Dan being the perfect young husband around South Kenton, with a girl like Bee. It’s like a bad dream. At any rate, I’m not going near their damn house.”
Neither answered me. I looked restlessly from Livy, pale and silent in her chair, and Mortimer leaning toward the fire. Mortimer’s legs were like mere sticks in his trousers, which fell over them in greenish folds. I thought involuntarily of the thickness of my father’s thighs, straining against the cloth, held apart to give comfortable room to his great round belly. Mortimer was drawing his thin and trembling hand, knotted and corded, over his face, and I thought of my father’s glistening white teeth which he picked daintily with a gold toothpick. The involuntary thought occurred to me that my father represented lusty and bellicose life, splendid at the table, loud and hearty of laugh, shrewd of mind though not very intelligent. And here was Mortimer who had thought much and suffered much, who had bruised his poor knees on the rough slopes of Parnassus without arriving at the summit, and now lay exhausted at the foot, defeated but understanding. My father had never seen the distant, incandescent peak of that mountain, and life in its littleness and meanness had satisfied him. He squeezed the last drop of milk from its udders. Nevertheless, I thought that he was the happier of the two. It was very puzzling to a young idealist. Must understanding of life bring decay and death and chill hopelessness? Is the only happiness in gusty animal enjoyments, in sitting back on fat haunches and tearing at red fragments with a strong teeth?
I wanted to go up to see Sarah, but Livy, with some agitation, asked me not to. Sarah was not really ill, she explained, but very tired. She did not add “queer,” but I knew that was what she was holding back. We all sank into a cold depression. At last Mortimer rose and said he must go. I wondered with some resentment what he had been saying before I came, and why he did not say it to me. Livy asked him to remain for some hot coffee, but he refused. She helped him on with his galoshes with an almost daughterly tenderness. Just before leaving he put his hand on her shoulder, and pressed it, looking down into her eyes sorrowfully and understandingly. She averted her head quickly, and I saw that there were tears in her eyes. Grudgingly, I offered to drive him home, though I was annoyed at leaving Livy. But she asked me eagerly to return after taking Mortimer home, and I was mollified.
The parlor seemed even more gloomy and dim when I returned than before. Livy had put a small black shawl over her shoulders, and I was alarmed at her pallor. She looked tired and stricken as she gave me a wan smile. I sat down near her and took her hand.
“Livy, you look sick,” I said. “Think of me as a doctor and not a friend. What is wrong?”
She smiled at me suddenly with such an utterly amused smile that I felt foolish and pompous and young. She did not withdraw her hand.
“Oh, don’t, Jim,” she said, and her voice was full of her old cheeriness. “There’s nothing wrong. Don’t be prosy like your father. I’m just tired, I expect, dragging out every morning in the snow, and everything. And I don’t believe I like children very much,” she added frankly. “In fact sometimes I hate them. I don’t see how their parents bear them. I said something like that to Mrs. King once, and she was very indignant, and asked me significantly if I had ever said that to anyone else. She seemed to imply that it wouldn’t be good for my job. She also added that I was a born old maid; old maids, it appears, always hate children, and long to murder them in secret.” She laughed lightly.
I looked at her with grave longing, and chaffed her hand between mine. The fingertips were cold and tremulous. I noticed that she did not look at me, but at the fire, and that the smile on her face was a little fixed.
“Livy, why don’t you marry me soon, now?” I asked gently.
I expected her to remove her hand. I expected evasion, again. But to my joyful amazement, she turned her face to me. It had become quiet and a little frightened; her eyes were slightly distended, and there was a wrinkling of pain in the clear brows above them.
“Are you sure, Jim?” she whispered. I was so surprised and overjoyed that I could not speak, but I must have looked very eloquent, for she smiled, and put her free hand to her cheek. I knelt beside her, drew her tired head down to my shoulder, and held her tightly. It seemed all at once to me that my depression and all my puzzling thoughts of problems retreated to a dreamy distance as I held her. I felt her slow tears against my neck, and I kissed them away. They continued to roll down her cheeks, but under them she was smiling with a heartbroken quietness.
“Just all worn out,” I thought sympathetically. “My poor little Livy.”
I forgot everything as I sat beside her, planning eagerly for our future together. She listened, nodding, her eyes fixed intently on my face as though she was trying to make it real. When I kissed her goodnight at last, her lips were cold but very gentle.