by Jack London
This tacit promise of continued acquaintance gave Saxon a little
joy-thrill.
"Say," he said, as they neared her neighborhood, "what are you
doin' next Sunday?"
"Nothing. No plans at all."
"Well, suppose you an' me go buggy-riding all day out in the
hills?"
She did not answer immediately, and for the moment she was seeing
the nightmare vision of her last buggy-ride; of her fear and her
leap from the buggy; and of the long miles and the stumbling
through the darkness in thin-soled shoes that bruised her feet on
every rock. And then it came to her with a great swell of joy
that this man beside her was not such a man.
"I love horses," she said. "I almost love them better than I do
dancing, only I don't know anything about them. My father rode a
great roan war-horse. He was a captain of cavalry, you know. I
never saw him, but somehow I always can see him on that big
horse, with a sash around his waist and his sword at his side. My
brother George has the sword now, but Tom--he's the brother I
live with says it is mine because it wasn't his father's. You
see, they're only my half-brothers. I was the only child by my
mother's second marriage. That was her real marriage--her
love-marriage, I mean."
Saxon ceased abruptly, embarrassed by her own garrulity; and yet
the impulse was strong to tell this young man all about herself,
and it seemed to her that these far memories were a large part of
her.
"Go on an' tell me about it," Billy urged. "I like to hear about
the old people of the old days. My people was along in there,
too, an' somehow I think it was a better world to live in than
now. Things was more sensible and natural. I don't exactly say
what I mean. But it's like this: I don't understand life to-day.
There's the labor unions an' employers' associations, an'
strikes', an' hard times, an' huntin' for jobs, an' all the rest.
Things wasn't like that in the old days. Everybody farmed, an'
shot their meat, an' got enough to eat, an' took care of their
old folks. But now it's all a mix-up that I can't understand.
Mebbe I'm a fool, I don't know. But, anyway, go ahead an' tell us
about your mother."
"Well, you see, when she was only a young woman she and Captain
Brown fell in love. He was a soldier then, before the war. And he
was ordered East for the war when she was away nursing her sister
Laura. And then came the news that he was killed at Shiloh. And
she married a man who had loved her for years and years. He was a
boy in the same wagon-train coming across the plains. She liked
him, but she didn't love him. And afterwerd came the news that my
father wasn't killed after all. So it made her very sad, but it
did not spoil her life. She was a good mother end a good wife and
all that, but she was always sad, and sweet, and gentle, and I
think her voice was the most beautiful in the world."
"She was game, all right," Billy approved.
"And my father never married. He loved her all the time. I've got
a lovely poem home that she wrote to him. It's just wonderful,
and it sings like music. Well, long, long afterward her husband
died, and then she and my father made their love marriage. They
didn't get married until 1882, and she was pretty well along."
More she told him, as they stood by the gate, and Saxon tried to
think that the good-bye kiss was a trifle longer than just
ordinary,
"How about nine o'clock?" he queried across the gate. "Don't
bother about lunch or anything. I'll fix all that up. You just be
ready at nine."
CHAPTER IX
Sunday morning Saxon was beforehand in getting ready, and on her
return to the kitchen from her second journey to peep through the
front windows, Sarah began her customary attack.
"It's a shame an' a disgrace the way some people can afford silk
stockings," she began. "Look at me, a-toilin' and a-stewin' day
an' night, and I never get silk stockings--nor shoes, three pairs
of them all at one time. But there's a just God in heaven, and
there'll be some mighty big surprises for some when the end comes
and folks get passed out what's comin' to them."
Tom, smoking his pipe and cuddling his youngest-born on his
knees, dropped an eyelid surreptitiously on his cheek in token
that Sarah was in a tantrum. Saxon devoted herself to tying a
ribbon in the hair of one of the little girls. Sarah lumbered
heavily about the kitchen, washing and putting away the breakfast
dishes. She straightened her back from the sink with a groan and
glared at Saxon with fresh hostility.
"You ain't sayin' anything, eh? An' why don't you? Because I
guess you still got some natural shame in you a-runnin' with a
prizefighter. Oh, I've heard about your goings-on with Bill
Roberts. A nice specimen he is. But just you wait till Charley
Long gets his hands on him, that's all."
"Oh, I don't know," Tom intervened. "Bill Roberts is a pretty
good boy from what I hear."
Saxon smiled with superior knowledge, and Sarah, catching her,
was infuriated.
"Why don't you marry Charley Long? He's crazy for you, and he
ain't a drinkin' man."
"I guess he gets outside his share of beer," Saxon retorted.
"That's right," her brother supplemented. "An' I know for a fact
that he keeps a keg in the house all the time as well."
"Maybe you've been guzzling from it," Sarah snapped.
"Maybe I have," Tom said, wiping his mouth reminiscently with the
back of his hand.
"Well, he can afford to keep a keg in the house if he wants to,"
she returned to the attack, which now was directed at her husband
as well. "He pays his bills, and he certainly makes good
money--better than most men, anyway."
"An' he hasn't a wife an' children to watch out for," Tom said.
"Nor everlastin' dues to unions that don't do him no good."
"Oh, yes, he has," Tom urged genially. "Blamed little he'd work
in that shop, or any other shop in Oakland, if he didn't keep in
good standing with the Blacksmiths. You don't understand labor
conditions, Sarah. The unions have got to stick, if the men
aren't to starve to death."
"Oh, of course not," Sarah sniffed. "I don't understand anything.
I ain't got a mind. I'm a fool, an' you tell me so right before
the children." She turned savagely on her eldest, who startled
and shrank away. "Willie, your mother is a fool. Do you get that?
Your father says she's a fool--says it right before her face and
yourn. She's just a plain fool. Next he'll be sayin' she's crazy
an' puttin' her away in the asylum. An' how will you like that,
Willie? How will you like to see your mother in a straitjacket
an' a padded cell, shut out from the light of the sun an' beaten
like a nigger before the war, Willie, beaten an' clubbed like a
regular black nigger? That's the kind of a father you've got,
Willie. Think of it, Willie, in a padded cell, the mother that
bore you,
with the lunatics screechin' an' screamin' all around,
an' the quick-lime eatin' into the dead bodies of them that's
beaten to death by the cruel wardens--"
She continued tirelessly, painting with pessimistic strokes the
growing black future her husband was meditating for her, while
the boy, fearful of some vague, incomprehensible catastrophe,
began to weep silently, with a pendulous, trembling underlip.
Saxon, for the moment, lost control of herself.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, can't we be together five minutes without
quarreling?" she blazed.
Sarah broke off from asylum conjurations and turned upon her
sister-in-law.
"Who's quarreling? Can't I open my head without bein' jumped on
by the two of you?"
Saxon shrugged her shoulders despairingly, and Sarah swung about
on her husband.
"Seein' you love your sister so much better than your wife, why
did you want to marry me, that's borne your children for you, an'
slaved for you, an' toiled for you, an' worked her fingernails
off for you, with no thanks, an 'insultin' me before the
children, an' sayin' I'm crazy to their faces. An' what have you
ever did for me? That's what I want to know--me, that's cooked
for you, an' washed your stinkin' clothes, and fixed your socks,
an' sat up nights with your brats when they was ailin'. Look at
that!"
She thrust out a shapeless, swollen foot, encased in a monstrous,
untended shoe, the dry, raw leather of which showed white on the
edges of bulging cracks.
"Look at that! That's what I say. Look at that!" Her voice was
persistently rising and at the same time growing throaty. "The
only shoes I got. Me. Your wife. Ain't you ashamed? Where are my
three pairs? Look at that stockin'."
Speech failed her, and she sat down suddenly on a chair at the
table, glaring unutterable malevolence and misery. She arose with
the abrupt stiffness of an automaton, poured herself a cup of
cold coffee, and in the same jerky way sat down again. As if too
hot for her lips, she filled her saucer with the greasy-looking,
nondescript fluid, and continued her set glare, her breast rising
and falling with staccato, mechanical movement.
"Now, Sarah, be c'am, be c'am," Tom pleaded anxiously.
In response, slowly, with utmost deliberation, as if the destiny
of empires rested on the certitude of her act, she turned the
saucer of coffee upside down on the table. She lifted her right
hand, slowly, hugely, and in the same slow, huge way landed the
open palm with a sounding slap on Tom's astounded cheek.
Immediately thereafter she raised her voice in the shrill,
hoarse, monotonous madness of hysteria, sat down on the floor,
and rocked back and forth in the throes of an abysmal grief.
Willie's silent weeping turned to noise, and the two little
girls, with the fresh ribbons in their hair, joined him. Tom's
face was drawn and white, though the smitten cheek still blazed,
and Saxon wanted to put her arms comfortingly around him, yet
dared not. He bent over his wife.
"Sarah, you ain't feelin' well. Let me put you to bed, and I'll
finish tidying up."
"Don't touch me!--don't touch me!" she screamed, jerking
violently away from him.
"Take the children out in the yard, Tom, for a walk,
anything--get them away," Saxon said. She was sick, and white,
and trembling. "Go, Tom, please, please. There's your hat. I'll
take care of her. I know just how."
Left to herself, Saxon worked with frantic haste, assuming the
calm she did not possess, but which she must impart to the
screaming bedlamite upon the floor. The light frame house leaked
the noise hideously, and Saxon knew that the houses on either
side were hearing, and the street itself and the houses across
the street. Her fear was that Billy should arrive in the midst of
it. Further, she was incensed, violated. Every fiber rebelled,
almost in a nausea; yet she maintained cool control and stroked
Sarah's forehead and hair with slow, soothing movements. Soon,
with one arm around her, she managed to win the first diminution
in the strident, atrocious, unceasing scream. A few minutes
later, sobbing heavily, the elder woman lay in bed, across her
forehead and eyes a wet-pack of towel for easement of the
headache she and Saxon tacitly accepted as substitute for the
brain-storm.
When a clatter of hoofs came down the street and stopped, Saxon
was able to slip to the front door and wave her hand to Billy. In
the kitchen she found Tom waiting in sad anxiousness.
"It's all right," she said. "Billy Roberts has come, and I've got
to go. You go in and sit beside her for a while, and maybe she'll
go to sleep. But don't rush her. Let her have her own way. If
she'll let you take her hand, why do it. Try it, anyway. But
first of all, as an opener and just as a matter of course, start
wetting the towel over her eyes."
He was a kindly, easy-going man; but, after the way of a large
percentage of the Western stock, he was undemonstrative. He
nodded, turned toward the door to obey, and paused irresolutely.
The look he gave back to Saxon was almost dog-like in gratitude
and all-brotherly in love. She felt it, and in spirit leapt
toward it.
"It's all right--everything's all right," she cried hastily.
Tom shook his head.
"No, it ain't. It's a shame, a blamed shame, that's what it is."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, I don't care for myself. But it's
for you. You got your life before you yet, little kid sister.
You'll get old, and all that means, fast enough. But it's a bad
start for a day off. The thing for you to do is to forget all
this, and skin out with your fellow, an' have a good time." In
the open door, his hand on the knob to close it after him, he
halted a second time. A spasm contracted his brow. "Hell! Think
of it! Sarah and I used to go buggy-riding once on a time. And I
guess she had her three pairs of shoes, too. Can you beat it?"
In her bedroom Saxon completed her dressing, for an instant
stepping upon a chair so as to glimpse critically in the small
wall-mirror the hang of her ready-made linen skirt. This, and the
jacket, she had altered to fit, and she had double-stitched the
seams to achieve the coveted tailored effect. Still on the chair,
all in the moment of quick clear-seeing, she drew the skirt
tightly back and raised it. The sight was good to her, nor did
she under-appraise the lines of the slender ankle above the low
tan tie nor did she under-appraise the delicate yet mature swell
of calf outlined in the fresh brown of a new cotton stocking.
Down from the chair, she pinned on a firm sailor hat of white
straw with a brown ribbon around the crown that matched her
ribbon belt. She rubbed her cheeks quickly and fiercely to bring
back the color Sarah had driven out of them, and delayed a moment
longer to put on her tan lisle-thread gloves. Once, in the
fashion-
page of a Sunday supplement, she had read that no lady
ever put on her gloves after she left the door.
With a resolute self-grip, as she crossed the parlor and passed
the door to Sarah's bedroom, through the thin wood of which came
elephantine moanings and low slubberings, she steeled herself to
keep the color in her cheeks and the brightness in her eyes. And
so well did she succeed that Billy never dreamed that the
radiant, live young thing, tripping lightly down the steps to
him, had just come from a bout with soul-sickening hysteria and
madness.
To her, in the bright sun, Billy's blondness was startling. His
cheeks, smooth as a girl's, were touched with color. The blue
eyes seemed more cloudily blue than usual, and the crisp, sandy
hair hinted more than ever of the pale straw-gold that was not
there. Never had she seen him quite so royally young. As he
smiled to greet her, with a slow white flash of teeth from
between red lips, she caught again the promise of easement and
rest. Fresh from the shattering chaos of her sister-in-law's
mind, Billy's tremendous calm was especially satisfying, and
Saxon mentally laughed to scorn the terrible temper he had
charged to himself.
She had been buggy-riding before, but always behind one horse,
jaded, and livery, in a top-buggy, heavy and dingy, such as
livery stables rent because of sturdy unbreakableness. But here
stood two horses, head-tossing and restless, shouting in every
high-light glint of their satin, golden-sorrel coats that they
had never been rented out in all their glorious young lives.
Between them was a pole inconceivably slender, on them were
harnesses preposterously string-like and fragile. And Billy
belonged here, by elemental right, a part of them and of it, a
master-part and a component, along with the spidery-delicate,
narrow-boxed, wide- and yellow-wheeled, rubber-tired rig,
efficient and capable, as different as he was different from the
other man who had taken her out behind stolid, lumubering horses.
He held the reins in one hand, yet, with low, steady voice,
confident and assuring, held the nervous young animals more by
the will and the spirit of him.
It was no time for lingering. With the quick glance and
fore-knowledge of a woman, Saxon saw, not merely the curious
children clustering about, but the peering of adult faces from
open doors and windows, and past window-shades lifted up or held
aside. With his free hand, Billy drew back the linen robe and
helped her to a place beside him. The high-backed, luxuriously
upholstered seat of brown leather gave her a sense of great
comfort; yet even greater, it seemed to her, was the nearness and
comfort of the man himself and of his body.
"How d'ye like 'em?" he asked, changing the reins to both hands
and chirruping the horses, which went out with a jerk in an
immediacy of action that was new to her. "They're the boss's, you
know. Couldn't rent animals like them. He lets me take them out
for exercise sometimes. If they ain't exercised regular they're a
handful.--Look at King, there, prancin'. Some style, eh? Some
style! The other one's the real goods, though. Prince is his
name. Got to have some bit on him to hold'm.--Ah! Would you?--Did
you see'm, Saxon? Some horse! Some horse!"
From behind came the admiring cheer of the neighborhood children,
and Saxon, with a sigh of content, knew that the happy day had at
last begun.
CHAPTER X
"I don't know horses," Saxon said. "I've never been on one's
back, and the only ones I've tried to drive were single, and
lame, or almost falling down, or something. But I'm not afraid of
horses. I just love them. I was born loving them, I guess."
Billy threw an admiring, appreciative glance at her.
"That's the stuff. That's what I like in a woman--grit. Some of
the girls I've had out--well, take it from me, they made me sick.
Oh, I'm hep to 'em. Nervous, an' trembly, an' screechy, an'