Roxy

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44. A Break



Events now took their inevitable course. Precautions ;.f Mark and precautions of Lathers were alike in vain.

MoGowan did not say much to Nancy about the rifle when he saw her early the next morning. But he told her that Bonamy had denied all intention of going to Texas with her. What could Nancy do but fly in a passion and suggest that Jim should mind his own business and be gone? He retorted with a sneer that nobody of any sense would believe an old fox like Lathers, who wanted to get Mark elected. Whereupon Nancy told him he was a fool and that he must clear out. But the suspicion once fastened in her mind that Major Lathers "might be a-foolin' weth her" set Nancy wild with anger. Gossips of Rocky Fork who had long hated Nancy for her beauty and her arrogance were even now whispering about her. She felt already the coming of the contempt she should have to suffer if her disgrace should become known. She would be shut out of good society.

So she started to town at once. She would see Lathers and Bonamy together and have things made right. Nothing was so dreadful a blow to her self-love as this suspicion that she had been duped.

When McGowan heard that she had started to Luzerne, his jealous and vindictive suspicions were roused again. He took his rifle once more off the wall-hooks and followed, resolved to find out what this last move might mean, and to be prepared to square the account at any moment.

In the interview of the night before, Lathers had extorted from the reluctant Mark a certificate of his pleni-potentiary authority in the Kirtley matter. This was to be shown to any of the family who could read it, and used as a means of keeping Nancy quiet. On the morning after the encounter with McGowan, Mark went early to see the major, telling him in despair that the matter was ' as good as out." But the sheriff insisted that affairs were by no means desperate, and that, in sheer self-defense, Mark must proceed with his campaign as though nothing had happened. Bonamy had an appointment to go to Versailles for consultation over the political situation, and he must go. Lathers would 'tend to things and the like.

Roxy's look of mute appeal to Mark, as he departed that morning, disturbed him more than ever. She hardly ever said anything to him now. She had grown pale and was waiting for him to speak of something she knew not what. Of late she almost feared to hear this secret that weighed so upon him. Now he only glanced fuitively at her rigid face, and then, turning abruptly away without looking: at her Again, he said :

" I don't know when I'll be back."

It was a rude parting. No other word of farewell. He did not even regard her as he brushed past her in the porch, giving some direction to the old negro, Bob, about the horse How could Roxy know that it was the very volcano of feeling within that made it impossible for Mark to say more, or to look in her face the second time ' How could she understand that it was not deliberate neglect ? She did not weep. Her heart was stone dead within her.

When Mark had gene, Bobo stood gazing wistfully at Iter face. Re went up to her, ran his fingers up and down her cheeks coaxingly, and said, " Dear Roxy, dear Roxy feels bad."

In an instant Roxy folded the child-like youth in her afms.

" You love me, poor boy, don't you ? "

Then she smiled faintlv on him as she relaxed her hold, and Bobo straightway fed the chickens all the wheat they could eat. But Roxy sat down, with her hands in her lap, and looked steadfastly out of the window at the great, black flocks of wild pigeons, flying by millions upon mil lions across the river, in swarms stretching for miles up and down the valley. Every year she had watched the mysterious flights to and fro of these birds, that darken the sky with their countless wings. Now she looked steadfastly at them, appearing as by magic out of the southern horizon over the Kentucky hills. The sight stirred again her memories of the dreams and plans of the girl Rox} T , and she saw her own child-life pass before her, while she looked on as some one else. Then she remembered that it was May-day. The children would be going to Tardy's Thicket this morning. What armfuls of bright flowers she had gathered when she was a girl ! She saw herself again, on the return, stopping on top of a grassy hill that overlooked the town. The vision of the merrv songplays, " Ring around the rosy," and " Oats, peas, beans, and barley grows," came up before her again. She saw herself chosen as " true love," now by this lad and then by that one, while she in turn made her choice, as they danced the old game again on the grass-green hill-top.

As it all floated before her, she did not feel sorrow, regret, anything. How can one feel when one's heart is stono dead ?

Mark Bonamy rode out through the town aud off ovei Lindley's Hill. He marked the children gathering in groups to start for Tardy's Thicket. A dim remembrance of the freshness of his own childhood swept over him, like a breeze that starts moist and fresh across an arid desert, but that immediately becomes dry and hot and parching. For what is May-day to him out of whose life all the freshness and innocence of childhood is clean gone ? The bluebirds sang their softest love-songs on the top of the slanting stakes in the rail-fences by the road-side, boasting in their happy singing of the blue eggs in the round hole where they had built their nests. The cat-birds sang so as almost to rival their first cousins, the mocking-birds ; the red bird's rich voice was heard on every hand. The wild pigeons flew over Mark's head in myriads, and when lit was on a hill-top they almost touched him with their whirring wings. But all the joy of this day mocked a Bonamy. He was deaf and blind. The face of his wife pale, rigid, but beseeching, followed him. The dread oi disgrace mingled with his remorse. For miles and miles he rode, over hills and through hollows clad in the new leaves of oak and hickory and maple, fringed with fiowere of the dogwood and redbud and the thorny red haw ; for miles he rode through flat lands covered with beech, past "branches," whose noisy waters refreshed the roots of sycamores ; and for other miles he went through the Scotch settlement, along lanes bordered by blossoming elder-bushes with fence-corners in green and gold, of grass and dandelion, and in sight of sweet fields of dark-green wheat. But he saw nothing but the face of the heart broken Roxy. He hated the green earth and the blue sky in his heart ; he hated most of all himself.

At last, when full twenty miles from home, he stopped by the roadside ; exhausted by the strain of emotion he dismounted, anl sat upon a log, holding the bridle in his hand while the horse browsed on the grass and bushes. Why go on ? What did he care for a consultation with Bmall politicians at Versailles? What did it matter whether he should go to Congress or not ? The misery in him had killed the ambition. How can hope and perdition dwell together?

The combativeness of his temperament had always inclined him to face physical peril, never to flee from it. A sudden impulse, like that of fierce physical courage, seized him now to ride back to Luzerne, to confess to Roxy, to resign all thought of election to Congress, to make the best settlement he could with Nancy, and then to take the consequences. The daring and desperate thought was like the suicidal reaction of a man who is driven frantic by danger, he will kill himself to escape the dread of death.

He dropped the horse's bridle and walked to and fro across the road a few times. But deliberation had become impossible. He turned and seized the bridle again, sprang into the saddle and rode eagerly back over the road he had oome.

At last the long lane had turned.

And ever as he spurred his horse up over hills and down into rojky glens he was inwardly smitten for his delay in turning.

Did he pray now that he was riding back toward something better? No. But he swore. He cursed himself, he cursed the crime that had blackened his life, he cursed.

Nancy, he cursed Lathers, he cursed the world. He could have blasphemed the Almighty God himself. And yet for all his maledictions he was a better man even as he rode. For have ye not read how the devil, when he leaveth a man, casteth him down andrendeth him sore? And curses are often but the cry of the soul maddened by the scourge of conscience.

When it was yet mid-afternoon there were five more hilly miles for Bonamy to ride. Would he reach home in time to be the first to tell Roxy the evil story? The thought that she might hear it from some one else, and that so his confession might be forestalled, almost crazed him, and he swore and drove his tired horse on, up hill and down, until at last he came into the town with the horse foaming with sweat. It seemed to him that the people looked at him strangely. Then he remembered that his imao-ination was excited. But what were the people standing in the doors of stores and coming to the windows for ? Why did they seem to recognize him in a surprised way ? Perhaps, after all, they only wondered because his horse was dripping with sweat.

As he passed Lathers' office, that worthy chevalier, standing chewing meditatively in the door, started with surprise at sight of Bonamy and rushed out to him calling, " Mark, Mark ! "

But Mark only swore and waved him off impatiently, riding straight onward toward the blossoming apple-trees and waving Lombardies of his own place.

And Lathers, whose discomfiture had been witnessed by the crowd on the street corner, went back to his office and shut the door muttering that the devil and the like was let loose all around today.

" Ef he wants lo git shot that's his road," he added.