"I had my supper," he hurriedly fabricated, "at Peterman's. It's nice in here, Lettice, with you and all the things around. It has a comfortable look. You're right pretty, Lettice, too."

The unexpected compliment brought a flush to her cheeks. "I'm not pretty now," she replied; "I'm all pulled out." General Jackson ambled into the room, sat between them. "Let's hear the General sing," she proposed.

Gordon wound the phonograph, and the distant, metallic voice repeated the undeniable fact that Rip Van Winkle had been unaware of the select pleasures of Coney Island. The dog whimpered, then raised his head in a despairing bay.

A time might come in a man's life, Gordon Makimmon realized, when this peaceful interior would spell complete happiness.

XI

On Sunday he strolled soon after breakfast in the direction of the priest's. Merlier was standing at the door to his house. Gordon noted that the other was growing heavier, folds dropped from the corners of his shaven lips, his eyes had retreated in fatty pouches. His gaze was still searchingly keen, but the priest was wearing out. Gordon stopped in response to his silent nod.

"You ought to let up on yourself a little," he advised.

"Why?" the other briefly queried.

"'Why?', so's you will last longer."

To this the priest made no reply. A short, awkward silence followed during which Gordon grew restive. "If I looked so glum about Greenstream," he continued, "I'd move out." It was as though he had not spoken. "I'd go back where I came from," he persisted sharply. The priest's lips moved, formed words:

"'Che discese da Fiesole ab antico.'"

His imperturbable manner offered Gordon not the slightest opening; and he continued uncomfortably on his way. There was a quality about that thick, black-clad figure which cast a shadow over the cloudless day, it blunted the antic.i.p.ated pleasure of his meeting with Meta Beggs. There was about Merlier a smell of death like the smell of sooty smoke.

The stream lay shining along its wooded course; the range greenly aflame with new foliage rose into radiant s.p.a.ce; flickers hammered on resonant, dead wood. Gordon banished the somber memory of the priest. He was conscious of a sudden excitement, a keenness of response to living like a renewal of youth. He wished that Meta Beggs would appear; his direction to her had been vague; she might easily go astray and miss him. But he saw her, after what seemed an interminable period, leaving the road and crossing the strip of sod that bordered the stream. She had on a white dress that clung to her figure, and a broad, flapping straw hat wound with white. She saw him and waved. The brush rose thickly along the water, but there was a footway at its edge, with occasional, broader reaches of rough sod. In one of the latter she stooped, made a swift movement with the hem of her skirt.

"See," she smiled; "I said you would like me in them."

He attempted to catch her in his arms, but she eluded him. "Please," she protested coolly, "don't be tiresome.... We must talk."

He followed her by the devious edge of the stream to the ruined mill. He could see the blurring impress of the black silk stockings through the web of her dress; the dress had shrunk from repeated washing, and drew tightly across her shoulders. She walked lightly and well, and sat with a graceful sweep on a fallen, moldering beam. Beyond them the broad expanse of the mill pond was paved with still shadows; a dust of minute insects swept above the clouded surface. The water ran slowly over the dam, everywhere cushioned with deep moss, and fell with an eternal splatter on the rocks below.

Gordon rolled a cigarette from the muslin bag of Green Goose. "Why do you still smoke that gra.s.s?" she demanded curiously. "You could get the best cigars from Cuba." He explained, and she regarded him impatiently. "Can't you realize what possibilities you have!"

"I might, with a.s.sistance."

"If you once saw the world! I've been reading about Paris, the avenues and cafes and theaters. Why, in the cafes there they drink only champagne and dance all night. The women come with their lovers in little closed carriages, and go back to little closed rooms hung in brocade. They never wear anything but evening clothes, for they are never out but at night--satin gowns with trains and bare shoulders."

He endeavored to picture himself in such a city, amid such a life, with Meta Beggs. He felt that she would be entirely in place in the little carriages, drinking champagne. "That's where they eat frogs," he remarked inanely. In the tensity of her feeling, the bitterness of her longing, her envy, she cursed him for a dull fool. Then, recovering her composure with a struggle:

"I would make a man drunk with pleasure in a place like that. He would be proud of me, and all the other men would hate him; they would all want me."

"Some would come pretty near getting you, too," he replied with a flash of penetration; "those with the fastest horses or longest pockets."

"I would be true to whoever took me there," she declared; "out of grat.i.tude."

He drew a deep breath. "What would you say," he inquired, leaning toward her, "to a trip to--to Richmond? We could be gone the best part of a week."

She laughed scornfully. "Do you think I am as cheap as that--to be bought over Sunday?" She rose, and stood before him, sharply outlined against the foliage, the water, the momentary, flittering insects, taunting, provocative, sensual.

"Five years ago," he told her, "if you had tried this foolery, I would have choked you, and thrown what was left in the dam."

"And now--" she jeered fearlessly.

"It's different," he admitted moodily.

It was. Somewhere the lash had been lost from the whip of his desire. He was still eager, tormented by the wish to feel her disdainful mouth against his. The recrudescence of spring burned in his veins; but, at the same time, there was a new reluctance upon his flesh. The inanimate, obese mask of the priest, Lettice's sleeping countenance faintly stamped with pain, hovered in his consciousness. "It's different," he repeated.

"You are losing your hold on pleasure," she observed critically aloof.

He leaned forward, and grasped her wrist, and, with a slight motion, forced her upon her knees. "If you are pleasure I'm not," he challenged.

"You are hurting my arm," she said coldly. His grip tightened, and a small grimace crossed her lips. "Let go," she demanded; and then a swift pa.s.sion shrilled her voice. "Let go, you are crushing my wrist. d.a.m.n you to h.e.l.l!

if you spoil my wrist I'll kill you."

For a moment, as he held her, she reminded Gordon of a venomous snake; he had never seen such a lithe, wicked hatred in any other human being. "You are a gentle object," he satirized her, loosening his hold.

She rose slowly and stood fingering her wrist. The emotion died from her countenance. "You see," she explained, "my body is all I have to take me out of this," she motioned to the slumbering water, the towering range, "and I can't afford to have it spoiled. You wouldn't like me if I were lame or crooked. Men don't. The religious squashes can say all they like about the soul, but a woman's body is the only really important thing to her. No one bothers about your soul, but they judge your figure across the street."

"Yours hasn't done you much good."

"It will," she returned somberly, "it must--real lace and wine and ease."

She came very close to him; he could feel the faint jarring of her heart, the moisture of her breath. "And you could get them for me. I would make you mad with sensation."

He kissed her again and again, crushing her to him. She abandoned herself to his arms, but she was as untouched, as impersonal, as a stuffed woman of cool satin. In the end he voluntarily released her.

"You wouldn't take fire from a pine knot," he said unsteadily.

Her deft hands rearranged her hat. "Some day a man will murder me," she replied in level tones; "perhaps I'll get a thrill from that." Her voice grew as cutting as a surgeon's polished knife. "Please don't think I'm the kind of woman men take out in the woods and kiss. You may have discovered that I don't like kissing. I'm going to be honester still--last year, when you were mending the minister's ice house, and hadn't a dollar, I wasn't the smallest bit interested in you; and this year I am.--Not on account of the money itself," she was careful to add, "but because of you and the money together. Don't you see--it changed you; it's perfectly right that it should, and that I should recognize it."

"That sounds fair enough," he agreed. "Now the question is, what are we going to do together, you and me and the money?"

"Would you do what I wanted?" she asked at his shoulder.

"Would you?"

"Yes."

"We might try Richmond."

"Don't fool yourself," she returned hardily; "I know all about those trial trips. Any man I go with has got to go far: I don't intend to be left at some pokey little way station with everything gone and nothing accomplished."

"But," he objected, "a man who went with you could never come back."

"Back to this wilderness," she scoffed; "any one should thank G.o.d for being taken out of it."