46. Roxy Shakes The Dust From Her Feet
" Mr. McGowan, what are you hunting for ? "
It was the shrill voice of Mother Tartrura. She and Mrs. Hanks on their way to convey bad intelligence to Roxy had come suddenly on Jim who was still looking up and down the rows of the vineyard.
"Fer a crow," said Jim, a little disconcerted. Then he added in soliloquy, " Fer the blackest one I kin find."
"That man," said Mother Tartrum, ''ought to be stopped. He's going to shoot Mr. Bonamy. I'm sure of it. He said to me this morning that he'd like to get a shot at him with his rifle."
" Oh, dear ! " said Mrs. Hanks, as they came to the gate. " How awful that would be ! " But she could not help reflecting that in case of such an awful result Roxy would get her " thirds " of a very nice property.
Twonnet from the window saw Mother Tartrum and Mrs. Hanks come in at the gate. Roxy was still looking off vacantly at the sky and the pigeons.
" Mrs. Hanks is coming," said Twonnet, gently rousing Roxy by laying her hand on her arm. Roxy shuddered like one reviving from unconsciousness.
When the visitors knocked, Twonnet admitted them and stood by Roxy's chair when they had seated themselves There was a veiy awkward pause.
" Miss Lefaure," said Mrs. Hanks, " we should like to 6ee Roxy alone."
But Roxy looked at Twonnet appealingly and took hold of her dress, much as a timid child might have done.
" I think Roxy wants me to stay here," said Twonnet. " We've stood by one another in every trouble, you know."
" As her aunt I suppose I am her next friend," said Mi's. Hanks, testily, " and I have a very confidential communication to make."
" Best friends aren't always born in one's family, Mrs. Hanks, especially when one happens to be born as Roxy was, poorer than her relations." Twonnet made this rasping speech from an instinctive wish to draw to herself the fire of Mrs. Hanks and so to shield the smitten Roxy from that lady's peculiar lecturing abilities.
Mrs. Hanks bridled with anger, but Mother Tartrum's voluble tongue caught the wind first. Turning her sharp gray eyes restlessly from side to side under her spectacles, she came out with a characteristic speech :
" Now Miss Lefaure, we've got something very important to say to Mrs. Bonamy very important, and an awful secret, too. It refers to Mrs. Bon&my's private affairs to her relations with her husband. And we don't choose to have you hear it It isn't fit for a young woman to hear. You j ust go in the other room", won't you ? "
" Not till Roxy tells me to. I know what you are going to talk about. It isn't such an awful secret. It's talked about all over town, I. suppose."
At this suggestion of publicity, Roxy shuddered again
" Oh, somebody's been telling it, have they ? I suppose you hurried down here to tell it. People are such tattlers nowadays, Even young people aint ashamed to talk about the worst things. Well, Mrs. Hanks, if they know, I suppose we might as well go." Mother Tartrum could not bear that everybody else in town should be talking of the scandal and she be out of the way. She felt that people were infringing her copyright.
Bobo had by this time come into the room and stood behind his mother's chair observing Roxy's face. He had before noticed that Roxy was not pleasantly affected by his mother's presence and he was possessed with the impulse to defend Roxy at all times. He came round in front of his mother's chair and said :
" You'd better be going, Aunt Henrietta."
Mrs. Hanks grew red with indignation, and Bobo drew back for fear of a box on the ears.
"Well, Roxy, if you'd listened to my advice you might have seen better days. But even now you wont talk to me about your affairs. And so your husband's disgraced you. Are you going to put up with it and stay ? That's the question. You can get a divorce and get your share of the property. I came down to advise you because I have your interests at heart. But I do wish you'd consult more with me. And you might take pains to teach my own child not to be so impudent to me. He will call me aunt Now I think we'd better go back, Mrs. Tartrum."
" Go back, go back,' he cried with grief,
' Across the stormy water.
And I'll forgive your Highland chief,
My daughter, oh, my daughter ! ' "
muttered Bobo, who had committed endless strings ol poetry and in whose mind an echo of memory was easilj eet agoing by the sound of a word.
"I must say, Roxy," said Mrs. Hanks, with asperity, " that I think troubles are sometimes judgments on people. Some women put np withthings, but you wont, I'm sure, and if you should get a divorce you could get a good alimony, and "
" No, no ! " cried Roxy, getting to her feet. " What do you talk to me that way for? " Then she sat down again iiery but silent.
" Aunt Henrietta, you'd better go, right off."
"Bobo, you're too aggravating for anything," cried Mrs. Hanks. " To be insulted by my own child ! "
But she took the advice and departed, while Bobo, whose brain was now seething with confused excitement, swung his arms in triumph and chuckled :
" They're gone over bank, bush, and scaur,
' They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar."
" Twonnet," said Roxy, " what is this thing that is so dreadful? Everybody says it is awful and nobody will tell me what it is."
"I don't know, Roxy. I am like the man in the Bible that ran without a message. I heard that there was some scandal about Mark, and I came right off to you. Mr. Whittaker told me to come. I didn't hear what it was But I'm glad you didn't hear it from them."
" Has " But Roxy hesitated.
" What is it, dear ? " asked Twonnet, tenderly.
" Has Mark gone away for good ? "
" I don't know. I didn't know that he had gone al all."
Roxy leaned her head upon the window sill and lay thus a long time. Twonnet looked out of the window She saw a figure moving among the vines. Then Nancy Kirtley came stealthily out into the walk and approached the house. Twonnet looked at her for a minute. Then she said :
"Roxy, I do believe there is that same Kirtley girl thai we saw a long time ago the night Haz's baby died."
" Oh. Twonnet ! " said Roxy, catching hold of hei friend. " She's the one that all this is about. I know now. How can I see her ? I can't ! I hate her ! " And she buried her head in her hands.
" You mustn't see her," said Twonnet, shuddering.
" Yes, I must, if it kills me. I must know the worst of it. Bring her in here. Bobo, go out."
Nancy was in a hurry. Dimly through the rows of vines she had caught sight of Jim McGowan searching every avenue for Mark. She had not recognized him, but was sure that this man with a gun was some emissary of Lathers, bent on arresting her, or of recapturing from her the precious paper with which she hoped to drive Roxy away from her husband. There was, therefore, no time to be lost. She entered without a sign of recognition, and sat herself down boldly almost fiercely in front of Roxy. But there was something so awful in the rigid face of this woman, who drew back from her as from a hateful and polluted thing, that Nancy found it hard to begin. She began to feel a stinging sense of her disgrace. She had no circumlocutions at command. Her story was soon told. To the pure and sensitive Roxy it becomed so hideously repulsive, so horrible in the black consequences that it must bring, that woman-like-she refused to believe it, or, rather, she refused to admit that she beLeved it, in spite of all the evidence that her own knowledge of Mark's recent behavior furnished in confirmation.
" I don't believe a word you say," she said to Nancy.
" You don't, hey ? I knowed you was stuck-up. You stole him from me, and I swore I'd be even. I 'low I'm gittin purty nigh even about this time. Looky heer, beer's a watch-seal that Mark Bonamy gin me when he was a-runnin' fer the legislater in eighteen and forty. That's four year ago, soon after the night he danced all night with me, and gin all the rest the go-by. You don't believe that's his'n ? "Well, whose Testament's this ? He gimme that at Canaan. That come when he was a preacher. You're a town gal, and you kin read the writin' in that Testament. You see he loved me right along. I'll leave it to you, yourself, which a man would be likely to love most, you or me, now ? " And she pushed back her sun-bonnet and showed her beautiful face, fascinating as a leopard's.
Roxy drew away from her with loathing.
" You hateful creature ! ' : she said. " You aren't telling the truth." But she knew that Nancy's story was true.
"Oh yes! you don't like me. I don't wonder at that. I'm goin' to git even weth Mark, I am. ITim an' Major Lathers has been a-lettin' on he was ao-oin" off weth me to Texas. I'll show 'em ! Look at that paper, won't you ? " Here she handed the paper to Roxy, who saw these words, in a handwriting she could not mistake:
" Whatever arrangement Major Lathers makes with Nancy Kirtley I will carry out.
"Mark Bonamy."
" That was got up to fool me," proceeded Nancy, hy way of exposition. " Now, Mark Bonamy can do as he pleases. He kin go off weth me, or I'll have him tack up An' you'll larn, sis, whether it's safe to fool weth Nance Kirtley's beans or not. I'll git even weth the whole kit and tuck of you, by thunder ! It's a way the Kirtleys has, you know." And her eyes beamed with a ferocious exultation, as she saw a look of hopeless pain overspread the face of her victim.
Then Nancy gathered up from the floor, where Roxy had partly dropped and partly thrown them, her Testament and her watch-seal and the paper taken from Lathers, and departed, keeping a good look-out for sheriffs who might want to take her up.
" Twonnet," said Roxy, when Nancy had gone, " let's get out of this house. It smothers me. I shall die if I stay here. I hate everything here. It seems like a kind of hell ! "
She got up and went to her own room. She changed her gown for one that she had worn before her marriage. She gathered up the few little treasures she had yet from her girlhood, and put away everything that had been bought with Mark's money. Then she took her bundle and started out the door. The hired girl came after her to the piazza in amazement, and asked if she would be home to supper. But she shook her head in silence and went on, followed by Bobo and Twonnet.
Her father, who had heard the scandal by this time met her in the road, not far from the gate. She reached out her hand and took his with a little sob, and the stem old shoe-maker ground his teeth, but said nothing. Hand in hand walked the father and the daughter, followed by Bobo and Twonnet, till they entered the old log-house v with its familiar long clock and high mantel-piece and wide fire-place. Mrs. Rachel Adams and Jemima met her with tears ; only Roxy neither cried nor spoke. In her own upper room she set down her bundle with a sigh, and then, exhausted, lay down again on her own bed, and lay there, with Twonnet by her, until the day died into dusk and the dusky twilight darkened into Bight.