Foxfire

by Anya Seton

  Queer reactions in Dartland sometimes, Hugh thought now, as he turned his back on the Cunningham mansion and set out up a trail. Dart was a cultured man, the only other really intelligent man in Lodestone, but suddenly you’d run into a snag like this. Superstition. A soft spot. The Indian blood? he thought with astonishment, for he had forgotten this completely. He considered it now for a moment. He had had little contact with the Apaches though there were a few of them working in the mine, but they never came to the hospital or called a doctor. They disappeared, went home to the reservation most likely. Nobody knew much about them. They were very good miners, but a sullen and taciturn lot, who kept to themselves and resented the slightest indignity, especially when drunk. Apaches went hog-wild when they got drunk. But there’d been less trouble with them since Dart had become mine foreman. Well, Dart’s a good guy, he thought, no matter what, if that little Park Avenue babe he’s married doesn’t ruin him.

  Hugh caught a flicker of motion behind a creosote bush to his right, sighted the gun and forgot the Dartlands.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BY THREE O’CLOCK that afternoon, Amanda had swept the linoleum floor which looked as grimy as ever, scrubbed the kitchen table and put her scanty groceries into the one cupboard. She had also discovered how to pump a trickle of water into the rusty sink and managed to coax from the kerosene stove burners a shower of sparks and foul-smelling smoke.

  There was a sharp rap on her front door. Amanda said “Damn,” pushed her hair back from her face with dirty hands, and went to open the door.

  Lydia Mablett stood outside, dressed for calling. Her small plump body was sheathed in a silk print; black daisies on a grayish ground. She wore a Navajo Indian silver brooch and two strings of artificial pearls from the department store in Phoenix. A large black pocketbook dangled from her arm and her hands were encased in white cotton gloves. Her brown hair, sparsely threaded with gray, had never been cut and she had “ratted it back” with a comb into a pile on top of her head rather in the shape of a small beehive. On the apex of the beehive there perched a round, navy blue grosgrain hat. She wore small square glasses with silver rims, and through these she surveyed Amanda’s dishevelment with astonishment. Then she extended her cotton-gloved hand and said, “Mrs. Dartland, I believe?” in a tone of forbearing sweetness. “I’m Mrs. Mablett. I’ve come to welcome you to Lodestone.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Amanda, smiling nervously. “How nice of you ... I’m sorry I’m not fixed up, the house is in dreadful shape....” She clutched the doorknob tight, determined not to expose the shambles within.

  But Lydia was very good at managing people. She had been a social worker in Des Moines before she married Luther Mablett.

  “Oh, I quite understand—but I do so want us to get acquainted.”

  Amanda, without knowing how it happened, found that Mrs. Mablett was inside the house. The shining spectacles flashed from side to side, and behind them there gleamed an energetic light which would have been recognized by many a case family in Des Moines. Lydia’s tongue made a very slight clucking noise. She swooped down and removed a stack of Dart’s shirts from the chair to the bed and seated herself on the vacant place thus provided. Then she turned upon Amanda her look of determined sweetness.

  “You do seem to have rather a lot of things, don’t you—” she said looking at the fitted dressing case, the overflowing suitcases and bed. “As an older woman with quite a lot of experience, might I give you a little teeny-weeny word of advice?”

  Amanda, who had been longing for help and friendly counsel, now followed the example of most recipients of Lydia Mablett’s advice and found herself bristling.

  “Of course,” she murmured.

  “Adaptability,” said Lydia in her high, unexpectedly cooing, voice. “One must adapt oneself to—to circumstances. You won’t be able to live here as you did at home. I’ve lived in different mining towns for twenty years and Mr. Mablett always was so surprised that I could make a sweet little home for us, no matter where. I always said I had just one secret—adaptability.”

  “Lovely,” said Amanda, just managing to smile. “I shall try very hard to be adaptable, but I don’t know just where to begin yet. We need a good closet very badly. Have to get one built, I guess.”

  “It’s a pity Mr. Dartland could not have found a larger house,” said Lydia, “but dwellings are so scarce here.”

  “We couldn’t afford a bigger house on his salary,” said Amanda and saw the other’s face freeze.

  “I believe he gets a very fair salary for a mine foreman, and a new man at that. I seem to remember Mr. Mablett remarking upon it.”

  Oh Lord, thought Amanda, Dart warned me. “Yes, no doubt he does,” she said brightly. “I don’t know a thing about it. I’m so sorry I can’t offer you a cup of tea, or something.” “Quite all right—” said Lydia all sweetness again. She rose, but instead of leaving walked into the kitchen. “You don’t mind if I just see the rest of your little home? And my dear, no matter what else you do, do put up good nutritious lunches for Mr. Dartland. It’s so important, especially for the men who go underground a lot, like your husband. I have a little book on dietetics I’d be glad to lend you.—Oh, I see...” She pounced on a small domed black box which Amanda had not before noticed. It was lying on the window sill. “He didn’t take his lunch today?”

  “No,” said Amanda and shut her mouth. No, he didn’t take his lunch because I didn’t know he was supposed to, or that I should make it, or that that thing was a lunch box.

  “Little brides must never neglect their hubbies—” said Lydia smiling. She opened the peeling cupboard door and ran her eye over Amanda’s purchases. “Canned asparagus?” she said, “I always feel that’s such a luxury, I said to Pearl Pottner when she stocked it, that I thought it was foolish of her. She’d never sell it.”

  “I like asparagus,” said Amanda. “Mrs. Mablett, I’m awfully sorry, but I’ve got to get this place straightened up before Dart gets home. But please do come again some other time.”

  Lydia hesitated, much too thick-skinned to take offense. She was rather bored by her visit, but there were things she wanted to find out and she hesitated no longer. “Mr. Dartland is such an interesting kind of man,” she said. “He’s had a strange life, hasn’t he? Isn’t his mother an Indian?”

  “His grandfather was an Apache,” said Amanda moving toward the front door.

  “Goodness, weren’t you brave to marry him! Mr. Mablett always says the Apaches were so cruel and dangerous, of course not now, on the reservations.”

  “Do you think Dart is cruel and dangerous?” said Amanda.

  Lydia Mablett looked startled. She was not used to combat. “Of course not, dear—” she said laughing. “But I do hear he’s a teeny bit opinionated. Still, now he’s married, I’m sure he’ll—er—tone down. Wives can do so much to help.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Amanda. Years of her mother’s social training enabled her to give Lydia a pacific smile, and to take the white-gloved hand with sufficient cordiality.

  So Lydia finally left. Amanda returned to her labors. At dusk these were again interrupted: by a scratching, tapping sound. She whirled around and saw the doctor’s square, sardonic face peering through the window pane. “Hey!” he called, “D’you want a rabbit?”

  Amanda gave vent to another expletive. Her back ached, discouragement pressed heavier every minute. Privacy, amongst other virtues, seemed to be lacking in Lodestone, and she felt unequal to parrying more hostility. “Go away—” she said in the general direction of the window.

  Hugh opened the door himself and walked in. “Glamorous veneer sure wore off fast,” he observed, inspecting the girl. Her short hair, no longer sleek, stuck out around her head in duck-tails; across her face, innocent now of make-up, there ran two dirty streaks. A treacherous nail had torn a tri-cornered hole in the wrinkled cotton dress. “Life in Lodestone is a great leveler, I always think,” he added, helping himself to some tissue paper f
rom the nearest open suitcase. On it he deposited a small dead rabbit.

  “Peace offering,” he said. “Embittered doctor demonstrates heart of gold.”

  “Thank you very much,” she said coldly. “Though I haven’t the faintest idea how to cook it.”

  “Dart will show you,” said Hugh with equal coldness. “But I only hope you learn to pull your own weight pretty soon. Dart’s got a big, man-sized job to do, without nurse-maiding you along as well.”

  Amanda gasped. A flame ran up from the pit of her stomach. “You’re so beastly unfair! I’ve been here one day, I’m trying all I can. I can’t help it if I just don’t know things—I...”

  “Unfortunately,” said Hugh, “ignorance is no excuse. Even legally.” He lit himself a cigarette, crossed his legs, and leaned against the Sears-Roebuck-papered wall. “You’re used to soft, sentimental values. You think people should like you and help you just because you’re a pretty, well-bred girl, that they should make allowances for you. I don’t doubt that you’ve got a lot of fuzzy, sloppy ideas about love, too. They won’t wash with Dart, not for long. I’d bet a thousand bucks you haven’t the dimmest idea of the sort of man you married.”

  Amanda’s eyes flashed but she spoke with control, “Doctor Slater, is there any particular Lodestone law that forces me to join you in a discussion of my shortcomings?”

  Hugh laughed. “You’ve had a tough day, haven’t you! The Mablett give you a good going over? You better be nice to her though, my pet. Dart has enough troubles at the mine without petticoat skirmishes down in the town.” He gave her a mock salute and left, as abruptly as he had come in.

  Well, I’ve got troubles here too, she thought with hot anger. If Dart hadn’t left her alone today, this one day. If only he’d come back soon, take her in his arms and comfort her. Then the muddle wouldn’t matter, or the unaccountable jibes from strangers, or the rudeness of that impossible doctor.

  But it was nearly seven o’clock before Dart came “down the hill” and she heard the Lizzie’s characteristic sputter and snort outside. Cleansed in cold water, powdered, perfumed and freshly dressed, Amanda flew out to meet him.

  “Darling, I’m so glad you’re back! It’s so late,” she cried. He responded absently to her kiss and strode ahead of her into the house. She followed, feeling deflated.

  “Still pretty much of a mess,” she said nervously, indicating the room. “I’ve made a list of things to be done, that we’ll simply have to get.” She took her little list from the bedroom table. It said “Closet, hangers, mirror, another cupboard in kitchen, paint,” and continued down the page.

  She held it out and saw that Dart was not listening. He sat on the chair, pulling off his boots and frowning into space. Amanda put the paper down. She had violated her mother’s No. 1 rule, “Never bother your husband at night until he’s fed.”

  “Tired, dear?” she asked.

  Dart shook his head impatiently. As a matter of fact he was never tired. He had endless endurance and complete indifference to bodily discomforts. Nor, as she had already discovered, did the physical weaknesses of others interest him. He might be indulgent but he did not understand them.

  “Was it hard today at the mine?” she persisted. He went to the kitchen and began to pump water. He sluiced it over his face and neck and hair. Gradually her question penetrated his thoughts. He looked at her with astonishment, seeing someone who had the right to question, someone whose desire to question must be gratified.

  “That damn fool is ruining the mine. We’ll fold if he goes on like this. But I won’t let him.”

  “Mablett?” she asked slowly. “What is it he does, Dart?”

  “Gross incompetence coupled with petty jealousy and megalomania.”

  “How?” she asked, puzzled. “How can one man hurt a big mine?”

  “It’s not a big mine anymore, it’s a marginal enterprise with great possibilities. This guy is mine superintendent and he has the power to bungle every single operation because poor old Tyson’s not well enough to stop him.”

  Amanda frowned, trying not to feel annoyed at this recurrent theme which she did not understand How little she had ever actually envisioned Lodestone or the mine. Her speculations and fantasies had never traveled past Dart himself and his relation to her.

  Nor did Dart seem eager to enlighten her. “Come on, Andy—or Mrs. Zuckowski won’t have any grub left for us.”

  She nodded, then said involuntarily, “No tie?”

  Dart had changed the blue jeans for a frayed pair of flannel pants and an open khaki shirt.

  He laughed. “No tie. The Imperial Hotel is not the Ritz.”

  She walked along beside him in the crisp evening air. The stars, larger than she had ever seen them, shone like silver lamps against the blue night. The street was silent, the town had regained its air of expectant mystery as though it awaited a revelation—fear or beauty from an ancient splendor poured down by stars and mountains free from human taint, hostile to it.

  Amanda slipped her arm through Dart’s, wanting to share with him, to pull him back into close communication. “Are the nights always like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Big—and—frightening—thinking how silly and little we all are.”

  Dart paused a second in his even stride. He turned his face up to the sky and she saw the starlight flash across his upturned eyes. He’s part of it—she thought, and uneasiness returned to her. He’s apart from me, and part of it.

  “You mustn’t be afraid of things,” he said, gently.

  I’m not, she thought, startled and a little hurt. She thought in swift refutation—swimming, sailing, riding, physical courage for which she’d always been praised. And yet, she knew that was not what he meant. “I’d bet a thousand bucks you haven’t the dimmest idea of the sort of man you married.”

  “Dart—I don’t like Doctor Slater,” she said. “I haven’t told you yet about today, but he was”—she laughed a little—“obnoxious.”

  “You’ll get used to him,” said Dart. “Here’s Mrs. Zuckowski’s.”

  They turned into a two-storied frame building with a towering false front. The lobby smelt of stale tobacco juice from the cuspidors and overcooked cabbage. Dart and Amanda sat down at the long table in the chilly dining room, where two commercial travelers and a man from the Hayden smelter were finishing their supper.

  Dart and the smelter man fell at once into unintelligible conversation: concentrators, flotation, tonnage. Through this ran a graver note of possible shutdown, of mounting loss, of the deplorable copper prices. “You’re lucky you got some gold here—” said the smelter man, shaking his head and Dart’s face tightened. “Such as it is—” he answered.

  Amanda listened absently, trying to avoid the sly disrobing stares of the two salesmen, trying to cut the blackened, greasy pork chops. She longed for the moment when she could be alone again with Dart, could tell him some of the day’s annoying little incidents, sit on his lap and have him soothe and pet and make love to her until she forgot all niggling discomforts and was reassured.

  On the following Saturday morning, little Bobby Pottner appeared at Amanda’s door with a note. It said:

  “Mr. and Mrs. Luther Mablett are holding a card party and collation at their home on Creek Street at seven o’clock tonight. The favor of Mr. and Mrs. Dartland’s company is requested.”

  The note was written in green ink and there was an embossed cluster of gold apple blossoms in the upper left corner.

  Amanda read it twice, then burst into youthful giggles.

  Bobby, who was groping under the door step after a chuckwalla lizard which had eluded him, looked up. “What’s so funny?”

  “Royal command,” Amanda said, still giggling. “And I thought it said ‘collection.’ Visions of Mrs. Mablett passing the hat. What is a collation, Bobby?”

  He returned to the lizard. “Grub, I guess. Mom’s been cooking stuff for it all morning.... Well—” he said impatiently, “you
gotta write sompthin’ back, you know—she’s waiting.”

  Amanda frowned. “We certainly haven’t any previous engagement,” she said half to herself. “I don’t know if Dart will approve but I suppose we ought to go.”

  “You gotta go,” said Bobby astonished. “Everyone does.”

  Amanda retreated to the kitchen table and composed a brief acceptance in Mrs. Mablett’s own words. Bobby departed and she returned to her chores, her curiosity mildly piqued. Any party, even a Mablett one, might be fun if only Dart were not annoyed by her acceptance. Still, there was no way of consulting him. She saw so little of him, for he spent six days a week at the mine. It was hard. In fact, everything was hard.

  The shack was tidier and more habitable, since Dart had knocked up a large plaster board closet for her off the kitchen. And they had painted the walls of both kitchen and bedroom a soft sage green. Other improvements must wait because there was no money to pay for them. As it was, the plaster board and paint had been charged at the Mine Supplies Store, and not without protest from Dart, who had a horror of debt.

  Amanda had inherited her mother’s optimism, a comforting certainty that “there was always a way” and when you really needed something, the Lord would somehow provide.

  On paper Dart’s salary had seemed adequate. She and her mother had discussed it several times in the long evenings before Dart came East. “You’ll have to be careful, baby”—Mrs. Lawrence had said buoyantly—“but things out there will be cheap, and, of course, you’ve got all your clothes and things. You’ll manage.”

  But things out here were not cheap. A mining town was expensive. The far eastern depression prices in the winter of 1933 scarcely affected it at all.

  Food and rent were exorbitant for the value received, and by the time they paid out insurance, fuel for the stove and the car, and a portion of Mr. Tyson’s loan, there was nothing at all left for “sundries.”