Roxy

37. Divisions

It does seem that matrimony might be improved " ir. this progressive age." How is it that there is no method by which a husband can be guaranteed ? When one considers how often a woman who has married a saint of twenty-five finds in ten years that by some transformation she is wedded to a middle-aged sinner, it really seems that there ought to be bondsmen who should stand surety that the piety, industry and supple courtesy of the bridegroom shall be perpetually maintained at the standard of the days of courtship. A husband warranted to keep in any climate and to stand the test of extraordinary temptations without molding or deteriorating in any respect would be most desirable. In how few cases do women find the goods " as represented." Indeed, it seems that the durability of a husband's good qualities does not enter into the thought of a bride. All men are unchangeable in the eyes of their sweethearts. Does it never occur to a young woman who inquires anxiously whether a certain sort of dry goods " will wash," to ask also whether a fair-seeming young man has fast colors in his character, or whether after ihe first scrubbing that adverse circumstances shall give him, he will come out a faded rag ?

Here was Roxy, who had loved and married a heroic missionary, impatient to brave malaria, alligators, and persecution in the republic of Texas, for the kingdom of heaven's sake. In three-quarters of a year she finds that she is married to a popular young lawyer, eager for small political honors, and caring nothing for missions and pre cious little for the kingdom of heaven. By some enchantment the man she had married is changed to another; one restraint after another is slipping away. To what kind of a man will she be wedded in an another year ?

But it is not the husband alone that needs to be warranted. If Mark had ceased to be the blazing comet of the religious firmament of Luzerne, Roxy's steadier light also paled. The differences of thought and feeling between the two were so great that Roxy had now a constant sense of being half deserted, though Mark would have resented a charge of neglecting her. Mark, indeed, found to his surprise that he had not married the meek and inoffensive saint he thought. The shoe-maker's daughter developed the shoe-maker's temper. She put Amanda's innuendoes and Mark's heedlessness together. Whether she spoke her reprehension of Mark's ways, or whether she kept silence, he knew that she was offended vdth him. Roxy began to back-slide so it seemed to the church-members. For, from her constant perturbation of mind and her constant irritation of temper, she was ever in a state of self-reproach. She went to all the meetings, but she no longer took a leading part. She sat off, as one apart from the rest ; she spoke with reserve ; she treated her old friends shyly, and they said that her position and the temptations of this world had led her away from the cross and made her too prond to meet her friends cordially. For often a reserve that hides a bitter humiliation peems to be haughtiness.

Is it any wonder that Mark felt his marriage a disappointment? He had given Roxy social position, every comfort, liberty to be as pious as she pleased, a house with a row of aristocratic Lombardy poplars, the Bonamy name, He had asked nothing on the other hand but liberty to do as He pleased. And now because she could not domineer over him and keep him from the career that his gifts fitted him for, she was unhappy and ill-tempered. Was there a more inoffensive, easy-going and kind-hearted husband in the world than he ? He gave Roxy everything. Do you wonder that he was angry and stubborn when he thought of her dissatisfaction ? -- that he determined not to be controlled by a woman ? -- that he showed his defiance by doing what he knew she most disliked him to do ? Mark Bonamy's friends should know that he was a man with a mind of his own. Many a man sacrifices possible happiness to his vanity.

Amanda, by indirect means, encouraged this state of mind in Mark. Not that she had any definite purpose in making mischief. Mischief-makers hardly ever do ; they make mischief from an appetite in a sort of devilish enjoyment of the upsetting they produce. Besides, it was not pleasant to Amanda to have Roxy the chosen nurse of her father. She inly believed that Roxy had interested motives. And mother Tartrum had evolved a similar theory from the shallows of her own consciousness. Roxy was looking out for the will.

But Roxy found her former self only in what she did for Colonel Bonamy and Bobo. She read to the old man. Sometimes she tried to awaken a religious sense in him, but he only smiled or spoke petulantly. It was hard to trace the action of his mind. To the controversy abouf Texas and the misson he never alluded. He did not seem much interested in Mark's success. A state of general apathy or petulant indifference seemed to have supervened on his life of restless and energetic action. He was relieved when the spring came again. With the aid of his cane he promenaded, on clear days, up and down the front porch, hobbling and holding by the balusters at times. What he thought or felt or whether he thought of anything or felt aught beyond his physical ailments, Roxy could not guess. His mind seemed a little stronger than at first and his hold on the nouns came to be firmer in proportion.

Roxy used to wish that some of his old eombativeness might return ; then she might come to know without humbling herself to ask, just what there was in his allusion to Nancy Kirtley.

As for Nancy, when she had found that Mark was to remain within reach she had given up all thought of berating him or his wife. There might be a chance for revenge more to her taste. She had no very definite idea of what this possible revenge was, or what it might lead to. She was impelled by blind forces within her to seek conquest, to gratify vanity and resentment, to use craft. She had no more forethought of the ultimate result of a course of action, and hardly any more freedom of will, than an animal. She had all the qualities of her race Her ancestors delighted only in the craft, the pursuit, the victory and the destructiveness of the chase. Nancy had the same elements in her character ; her weapons and her game were different. That was all. She was still, like them, a beast of prey. Even her resentments were as unreasonable as blind impulse could make them. It was not Mark whom she hated, it was Roxy. Now that the " old man Bonamy," as she styled him, " had the palsy bad," and Roxy was likely soon to be mistress of the Lombardy poplars and the brick house, she found another reason for malice. In her primitive state of savagery, the sense of right and wrong had only reached a point according to which everything she desired ought to have beer hers. She wanted Mark and what pertained to him, therefore she had been robbed by her who possessed him. And she meant " to be even some day." Such was hei notion of equity and retributive justice. In moral culture she had not got beyond the age of: stone hatchets. The purpose of revenge grew to be part of her very nature, it mixed itself with and intensified her passion for Bonamy ; it became the most desirable object in the world to her pride. She exulted at the thought of a victory she meant to win, when everybody would see that she, Nancy Kirtley, knew how to get even with that hateful Adams girl, and " pay her back."

Nancy did not find much opportunity to try her blandishments on Mark. She and her sister-in-law, the drayman's wife, did not get on harmoniously together, and it was not possible for her to remain in her brother's house more than a day or two at a time. By the end of two days spent together, the incompatibility of the two women generally reached a climax, and separation became inevitable. Whereupon Nancy would return to Rocky Fork, and while away her time in dazzling the rustic beans, according to her wont, keeping half the young men and all the young women of the neighborhood in a state of distraction.

In her occasional trips to town, she had only chance conversations with Mark on the street. In these interviews Mark treated her with off-hand cordiality, partly because he was afraid of her, but partly also because he could not but feel the fascination of her physical perfectness.

Nancy saw with delight that McGowan, the irost devoted of her lovers, was waxing desperate under hei treatment. She alternately fascinated and froze him. She was " like the second-day ager," Jim said. " She was now this away, now that away. Some days she was all ishiney-like and sweet ; and then the very next day she looked at him so as to make the cold chills run down his back."

Nancy took so much pleasure in the cat-like sense of power she had in playing with the hopes and fears of the poor fellow, who was thus beyond escape the prey of her fascinations, that she was delighted to see him in these days often intoxicated. She knew that everybody would say that she had " played the devil with Jim," and that was a tribute to her power. Her pleasure at having thus enmeshed him tended to abate her resentment toward Roxy ; but that resentment was suddenly fanned into a new flame.

As McGowan went past the cabin of the Kirtleys one evening early in June, just enough intoxicated to be defiant, he reined up his horses and began to call Nancy, The girl was wonderfully amused at his inebriate condition, and she came out prepared to enjoy it.

" Nance," said Jim, looking at her with suppressed glee, "ole Bonamy's dead. Had another fit today, and cleared out, Guess the money's gone to Mark. Git up!"

And Jim comforted himself for the next mile by chuck ling in his inebriety, " I made her mad that time. Won't ole sis hop around now ? Hoop ! "

And could be have heard the denunciations of Roxy to which Nancy gave vent when he was gone, his drunken malice would have been content. Nancy's one consolation was that she would " get even," and " pay her back yet." She began her revenge by quarrelling with her mother, and making the house so hot that even the thick-skinned old Gid left the old woman and her youngest child to " hare it out," while He went over to Canaan and got his twisted bottle filled.